Full Circle Magazine #133 by Ronnie Tucker

Full Circle THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE FOR THE UBUNTU LINUX COMMUNITY

ISSUE #1 33 - May 201 8

U PG R AD I N G AN O LD L APTO P IS IT EVEN WORTH IT THESE DAYS? full circle magazine #1 33

Fu ll Ci rcle M a g a zi n e i s n e i th e r a ffi li a te d wi th , n o r e n d o rse d b y, Ca n o n i ca l Ltd .

contents ^

Full Circle

HowTo Python

p.1 8

Freeplane

p.22

Upgrades With apt-fast

p.25

Inkscape

Graphics

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE FOR THE UBUNTU LINUX COMMUNITY

Command & Conquer

Linux News

p.04

p.1 5

Researching With Linux

p.32

Everyday Ubuntu

p.33

p.XX

My Story

p.36

My Opinion

p.38

p.XX

Review

p.43

Letters

p.46

p.XX

p.28

Q&A

p.XX

Ubuntu Games

p.48

p.XX

The articles contained in this magazine are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This means you can adapt, copy, distribute and transmit the articles but only under the following conditions: you must attribute the work to the original author in some way (at least a name, email or URL) and to this magazine by name ('Full Circle Magazine') and the URL www.fullcirclemagazine.org (but not attribute the article(s) in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you must distribute the resulting work under the same, similar or a compatible license.

Full Circle magazine is entirely independent of Canonical, the sponsor of the Ubuntu projects, and the views and opinions in the magazine should in no way be full circle magazine #1 33 2 contents ^ assumed to have Canonical endorsement.

E D I T O R I AL

This magazine was created using :

WELCOME TO THE LATEST ISSUE OF FULL CIRCLE.

e have more Python, Freeplane, and Inkscape for you this month. Due to personal reasons Miguel and his Ubuntu Touch series has had to miss this month, but hopefully he'll be back next month. Also no Great Cow Basic this month, but it has been replaced with an interesting article about upgrading with aptfast. It's a bit unconventional, but it is topical what with 1 8.04 (Bionic Beaver) being released last month. This month's MyOpinion gives cause to think: is it really worth it to upgrade a laptop these days? Not just software, but with hardware too. What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to email them to letters@fullcirclemagazine.org. Elsewhere, we have a game review (Deus Ex) and a distro review (Neon). Neon uses the (KDE) Plasma 5 desktop. Last but by no means least, don't forget that the FCM 201 8 survey is still up: http://bit.ly/fcm201 8.

All the best, and keep in touch!

Ronnie

ronnie@fullcirclemagazine.org

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Submitted by Arnfried Walbrecht

FULL CIRCLE 201 8 SURVEY It's that time of the year again where we ask what you think of FCM, Ubuntu, and Linux. Some questions are a requirement, some you can skip over if not applicable. Your answers will help shape Full Circle, so please use your constructive criticism. If you don't tell us what you think, or what we're doing wrong, then we won't know.

Survey URL: http://bit.ly/fcm201 8

LINUX LITE 4.0 OS ENTERS B ETA WITH N EW LOOK AND FEEL, B ASED ON U BUNTU 1 8.04 LTS

sounds. Also, Linux Lite 4.0 ships with the MenuLibre tool to help you easily edit application menu entries and Shotwell for basic image management.

ubbed "Diamond," based on Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS, and powered by the Linux 4.1 5 kernel, the Linux Lite 4.0 operating system enters beta stages of development today to give us a first glimpse of the upcoming release, which was slated for worldwide release on June 1 , 201 8.

Another major change in Linux Lite 4.0 is that 32-bit installations are no longer supported. The release would be available only for 64-bit computers, though the developer promises to offer support for existing Linux Lite 3.x installations until April 2021 , when Canonical would end support for its Ubuntu 1 6.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series.

According to the developer, Linux Lite 4.0's biggest changes are both internal and visual as the operating system comes with a brand new icon and system theme, namely Papirus and Adapta, Timeshift app by default for system backups, and new, in-house built Lite applications. Among the new Lite apps, we can mention the Lite Desktop, which manages application icons and other objects on the desktop, and Lite Sounds, a tool designed to help users manage system-wide full circle magazine #1 33

for the year 201 8. The Kali developers have already shifted their release model to rolling but they keep releasing these snapshots from time to time to provide a fresh ISOs to new users. Following that tradition, Kali Linux 201 8.2 has been pushed as the second release. 201 8.2 is the first Kali ISO to be based on Linux kernel 4.1 5. It brings along the expected fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre flaws. So rest assured about these CPU flaws.

On the hardware support front, now the graphics cards of AMD are better supported. Moreover, AMD Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/li users can also take advantage of Secure Encryption Virtualization nux-lite-4-0-os-enters-beta-withfor better security and virtual new-look-and-feel-based-onmemory encryption. ubuntu-1 8-04-lts-520892.shtml It goes without saying that Kali 8.2 features lots of package KALI LINUX 201 8.2 ETHICAL 201 updates to give you the latest of H ACKING D ISTRO I S H ERE everything. The updated packages include Bloodhound, Reaver, arlier this year in February, PixieWPS, Burp Suite, Hashcat, etc. Offensive Security pushed the first release snapshot of Kali Linux A notable change comes in

E 4

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Metasploit that makes it easier for you to access the scripts. Kali devs have included the links to all scripts in the PATH and they start with msf-.

with a focus on “software Source: development, scientific computing, https://fossbytes.com/pop_os-1 8DevOps, and the maker movement 04-release-download-features/ – essentially STEM.” Well, Pop!_OS isn’t any different.

Source: https://fossbytes.com/kali-linux201 8-2-download-iso-torrentfeatures/

As Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu, the release of Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS was bound to be followed by Pop!_OS 1 8.04. System76 continues to refine the operating system and keep adding its own set of tweaks for a better experience. For this release, the installer has been refined and a good amount of effort has been put. The overall visual design and drive selection panel have been updated. It also supports custom partitions and LVM partitions. System76’s own firmware notifications can now natively appear on operating system’s notification system–both on Ubuntu and Pop!_OS.

POP!_OS 1 8.04 RELEASED — G ET SYSTEM 76’S B EAUTIFUL U BUNTU -BASED LINUX D ISTRO

ut of the large crop of PC manufactures out there, System76 is one of the very few ones with a focus on Linux-based operating systems. Last year wh±en Ubuntu decided to ditch Unity development and switch back to GNOME, System76 chose to fork Ubuntu and create something new and beautiful. Pop!_OS is the result of that decision, and its development is gaining pace. Last year, in an interview with Fossbytes, System76’s CEO Carl Richell told that they created their products

The battery indicator has also been improved and now one can see the power status more clearly. A power profile picker has also been added to manage the settings in a better way. Now one can choose between High Performance, Balance, and Battery Life. full circle magazine #1 33

FEDORA 28 “CUTTING EDGE” LINUX D ISTRO RELEASED WITH N EW FEATURES

ed Hat-sponsored Fedora operating system is known for its bleeding edge features and leading the way for other Linux distros. Very often Fedora makes way for technologies that are often adopted by other distro developers. It’s also Red Hat’s testing ground as it acts as the upstream source of RHEL. GNOME 3.28 is the default desktop environment shipping with this release. As a result, you get a wide variety of improvements and fixes. The most notable GNOME 3.28 features are updates to Files, Contacts, Clocks, Calendar, and on-screen keyboard apps. Fedora 28 comes included with some popular 3rd-party software repos like Chrome, PyCharm,

Steam, etc. You’re asked to enable them when you launch GNOME Software 3.28 for the first time. On the hardware front, Thunderbolt 3 support has been added. This Fedora 28 feature will allow GNOME shell to automatically enroll Thunderbolt devices when they’re connected. This little change is going to make the lives of many Linux enthusiasts more comfortable– especially for those who love to hop distros and try out things on virtual machines. So, from Fedora 28, any installation of Fedora will have Virtual Box Guest Additions working out of the box. This will bring capabilities like auto desktop resizing, seamless mode, copy/paste b/w host and guest etc. Source: https://fossbytes.com/fedora-28download-features/

M AJOR D EBIAN LINUX KERNEL PATCH FIXES 8YEAR-O LD PRIVILEGE ESCALATION FLAW contents ^

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he Debian Project released new major Linux kernel patches for the Debian GNU/Linux 8 "Jessie" and Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system series to address a total of 27 security vulnerabilities, including an 8-yearold privilege escalation flaw.

introduced in the Linux kernel no less than eight years ago. It affected udl (DisplayLink) driver's mmap operation, allowing a local attacker with access to a udl framebuffer device to gain root access by overwriting kernel memory.

First and foremost, the security update again patches Debian GNU/Linux's kernel against both variants of the Spectre vulnerability (CVE-201 7-571 5 and CVE-201 7-5753). These could allow an attacker that has control over an unprivileged process to read memory from arbitrary addresses, including kernel memory.

Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/ major-debian-linux-kernel-patchfixes-8-year-old-privilegeescalation-flaw-520942.shtml

While Spectre Variant 2 was mitigated for the x86 architecture (amd64 and i386) via the retpoline compiler feature, Spectre Variant 1 was mitigated by first identifying the vulnerable code sections and then replacing the array access with the speculation-safe array_index_nospec() function.

Another important bug (CVE201 8-8781 ) patched with these new kernel updates for Debian GNU/Linux is a recently unearthed privilege escalation flaw that was

user discovered a Chromium Gerrit commit explaining a new device policy designed to allow containerized Linux apps to Chromebooks. Then, someone discovered a Terminal app, whichfailed to install, but suggested upcoming support for Linux apps.

Now that the feature is finally accessible to the masses, you can try Linux apps on your Chromebook by switching to the Chrome OS Dev channel. To do that, access the Chrome OS scroll down on the left LINUX APPS ARE COMING Settings, side panel list and click on "About TO CHROMEBOOKS AND YOU Chrome OS," then click on CAN TRY THEM RIGHT N OW "Detailed build information," click "Change channel" next to "Channel," and choose the umored to come to a Developer channel. Chromebook near you, support for Linux apps just entered Click "Change Channel" to beta testing in the latest Chrome change the channel and apply the OS Dev channel, as confirmed by settings. Chrome OS will then Kevin Tofel of About automatically download an update Chromebooks. The feature to your Chromebook and ask you appeared in the Settings and needed to be turned on if you want to restart. Once you're back on the desktop, open the Chrome OS to use Linux tools, editors, and Settings again, go to "About IDEs on your Chromebook. Chrome OS" and make sure you're running at least Chrome OS The first sign of Linux app 68.0.341 6.0. Go back and turn on support in Chrome OS appeared Linux (Beta) feature under the two months ago when a Reddit full circle magazine #1 33 6

Linux Apps section. Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/l inux-apps-are-coming-tochromebooks-and-you-can-trythem-now-in-chrome-os-dev520966.shtml

U BUNTU MATE AND U BUNTU B UDGIE D ROPPING 32-BIT H ARDWARE SUPPORT

any leading Linux distros like Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Manjaro, etc., have already ditched the support for 32-bit architecture and decided to focus on 64-bit machines. Now, following their footsteps, Ubuntu Budgie and Ubuntu MATE have also joined the league. The main reason behind these moves is the decreasing number of users actually running these operating systems on 32-bit machines. That’s why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep allocating resources and time to the hardware that people don’t use anymore. Ubuntu’s flagship edition contents ^

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decided to make this change from 1 7.1 0; Ubuntu Budgie and Ubuntu MATE will be doing the same from the next 1 8.1 0 release. MATE team has said that this change will let save time and offer better support to ARM devices like Raspberry Pi. The development teams also have limited access to 32-bit hardware, which doesn’t ensure a rigorous testing. Don’t worry. If you’re still stuck with your older hardware and looking to get some work done, you’re all set for the next 3 years. As this change will take place from 1 8.1 0, the 32-bit 1 8.04 images will continue to get support for the next 3 years, i.e., April 2021 . Source: https://fossbytes.com/ubuntumate-ubuntu-budgie-drop-32-bitsupport/

KAOS KDE-FOCUSED ROLLING LINUX DISTRO CELEBRATES 5 TH BIRTHDAY WITH UPDATED ISO

hen a person celebrates a birthday, they often receive gifts, eat cake, and spend time with friends and family. After all, it is intended to be a happy occasion as the person marks another year of life. But what the heck does a Linux distribution do to celebrate a birthday? In the case of the excellent KaOS operating system, the answer is simple -- release an updated ISO. Yes, as a way to mark the 5th birthday of the KDEfocused distro, version 201 8.04 is now available for download. You get Plasma 5.1 2.4, Linux kernel 4.1 5.7, Libreoffice 6.0.3, and more. "It is five years ago this month that KaOS started, a nice way to commemorate is with releasing 201 8.04. This ISO has a complete redesign of the Midna theme for 201 8. Some 2,500 new icons in use, rewritten sddm login theme and a KaOS community selected new wallpaper (created by Jomada)," says The KaOS Team. The team further says, "Also new is KaOS' creation Croeso (Welsh for welcome) for helping with configuring a new install. It full circle magazine #1 33

will run on the newly installed system and offers to adjust some 1 5 commonly used settings and replaces the formerly used, PyQt based first run wizard Kaptan. It also includes a custom Wallpaper selector, distribution info, and news. It is written in QML and fits well with the Welcome application used in the Live system. The latter now includes a fully rewritten (also in QML) Installation Guide."

According to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 will focus more on the overall security of the Linux-based operating system. Not that Ubuntu or any other GNU/Linux distribution out there is not already very secure by design, thanks to the powerful Linux kernel, but Shuttleworth wants to raise the bar even higher on security for the Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 release.

Source: https://betanews.com/201 8/05/04 /kaos-kde-linux-5th-birthday-iso/

Apart from the on-going security enhancements, Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 will also come with various other novelties, including the upcoming GNOME 3.30 desktop environment by default, a new system theme by default, called communitheme, and all the latest GNU/Linux technologies like GCC, Linux kernel, systemd, Wayland, X.Org Server, Mesa Graphics Stack, etc.

U BUNTU 1 8.1 0 O PERATING SYSTEM D UBBED "COSMIC CUTTLEFISH " BY M ARK SHUTTLEWORTH

e already knew for about a week or so, when the first daily build ISO images popped-up on the main servers, that Ubuntu 1 8.1 0's codename will start with Cosmic, but we did not new the animal mascot it will be accompanied by. So today Mark Shuttleworth announced the full codename of Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 as the "Cosmic Cuttlefish".

However, Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 will be a testbed for future LTS (Long Term Support) versions on the operating system, which means that it will be supported with security and software updates for only nine months. Source: contents ^

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https://news.softpedia.com/news/ ubuntu-1 8-1 0-operating-systemdubbed-cosmic-cuttlefish-by-markshuttleworth-521 029.shtml

M ALICIOUS PACKAGE FOUND ON THE U BUNTU SNAP STORE

n attentive Ubuntu user has spotted today a cryptocurrency miner hidden in the source code of an Ubuntu snap package hosted on the official Ubuntu Snap Store. The app's name is 2048buntu, a clone of the popular 2024 game, packaged as an Ubuntu snap —a relatively new app format for Ubuntu OS. According to a GitHub user named Tarwirdur, the app contained a cryptocurrency mining application disguised as the "systemd" daemon, along with an init script that provided boot persistence. The code mined the Bytecoin (BCN) cryptocurrency for a user account with the email address

"myfirstferrari@protonmail.com." Following the report, the Ubuntu Snap Store team removed the app, along with the app developer's other snap packages "pending further investigations." The Ubuntu Snap Store does not provide an install count, so the number of affected users is unknown. Anyone can create and submit a snap package to the Ubuntu Snap Store. Submitted snaps do not go through a security check, similar to the apps submitted to the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

FEDORA 28 I S O UT AND D EVELOPERS ARE I N LOVE WITH I T

edora, the love of many Linux enthusiasts just got an upgrade and brings a lot of new features. Fedora is not something a novice Linux user uses, if you are one, try out Ubuntu or Linux Mint as they are simpler and have a lot of resources to help you if you are stuck somewhere. But, if you are a serious Linux user, you would have tried Fedora at some point.

Fedora is a Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project which is community-supported and sponsored by the Red Hat. The With this incident, the Ubuntu latest version of Fedora uses Linux Snap Store takes its place in the Kernel 4.1 6.3. The latest Fedora28 pantheon of app stores that have suffered malware infections, right comes in three different editions next to the Chrome Web Store, the for a different usecases: Fedora 26 Workstation, Fedora 28 Server, Google Play Store, the Apple App and Fedora 28 Atomic Host. Store, and the Windows Store. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.co m/news/linux/malicious-packagefound-on-the-ubuntu-snap-store/

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All the mentioned versions are basically built from a common set of base packages and then extended to serve different purposes. The new packages come with a lot of bug fixes and performance tweaks along with some new features. The latest

Fedora28 base package comes with all the latest compilers including GNU Compiler Collection(GCC) 8, Ruby 2.5 and Golang 1 .1 0. The latest Fedora version tries to solve a very common problem most programmers face. It brings the modular repository feature which lets the developer use alternative software versions rather than the default package. This means, if you are a Ruby developer, you can use different versions of Ruby in different projects and maintain a good workflow without needing to change much. Fedora is making this possible with their new optional repository Modular or the “Application Stream” or AppStream in short. This software ships the software versions on independent life cycles. This helps in choosing the right version of the repository and still keep the operating system upto-date. This is done via a new optional repository Modular, aka the “Application Stream” or AppStream for short. contents ^

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Source: Source: https://www.technotification.com/ https://fossbytes.com/centos201 8/05/fedora-28-is-out-andlinux-7-1 804-released-update/ developers-are-in-love-with-it.html

CENTOS 7 1 804 LINUX D ISTRO AVAILABLE FOR D OWNLOAD

hile making a list of free operating systems that can be used both as a daily use system as well as a server, CentOS gets an early mention. Based on RHEL base, CentOS is known for being a stable and manageable platform. Just recently, the developers have shipped the sixth CentOS-7 release. It makes CentOS 7 1 804 the most current release, which based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 released on April 4th, 201 8. This release comes with tons of changes to cryptographic abilities of different packages. As a result, many outdated and insecure algorithms and protocols are deprecated.

CRITICAL PGP FLAWS CAN EXPOSE ENCRYPTED EMAILS I N “PLAINTEXT” — D ISABLE I T RIGHT N OW

mail users who use PGP (based on OpenPGP) and S/MIME to encrypt and decrypt their communications are at “immediate risk.” The reason is that a team of European researchers has found critical flaws in the encryption standards and currently there are no fixes available. The vulnerabilities dubbed EFAIL are harmful as they can reveal the contents of messages in plain text, even for the messages from the past. If an attacker gains access to a victim’s encrypted emails through methods like eavesdropping or compromising email accounts, EFAIL can be used to “abuse active content of HTML emails, for example externally loaded images or styles, to exfiltrate plaintext full circle magazine #1 33

through URLs,” reads the website detailing the vulnerabilities. A modified encrypted email sent by the attacker to the victim is decrypted by their email client. While doing so, the client loads any external content, thus, exfiltrating the plaintext to the attacker. The PGP encryption is mostly used by political activists, journalists, and whistleblowers as an extra layer of encryption. On the other hand, S/MIME is used mainly in enterprise infrastructure.

Source: https://fossbytes.com/efailvulnerabilities-openpgp-s-mimeexpose-emails-plaintext/

O PERA TOUCH IS A DREAM ANDROID BROWSER FOR

USERS WHO ARE ALWAYS ON THE GO

f your life is hectic, you probably have become very familiar with using your Android smartphone with one hand. You're powerwalking through the company Why this should be taken seriously is because the Electronic campus, or down the sidewalk on your way to work or a meeting and Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also you only have one hand to use to spreading the word. The navigate with your mobile device. Foundation which has been in For some, that may not be a communication with the problem. For most, however, using researchers has advised users to the phone with one hand can be an “temporarily stop sending and especially reading PGP-encrypted exercise in clumsiness. So when Opera announced the release of email”. their Opera Touch browser, one that could easily be used with one Users should immediately hand, my curiosity was certainly disable or remove any tools that piqued. After using the browser automatically decrypt PGPfor a while, I've discovered that encrypted emails until the flaws are understood and fixed, EFF said. Opera has hit that particular nail square on its head. Opera Touch They have published guides for makes one-handed usage not only Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and possible for all, but easy. Outlook.

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Survey URL: http://bit.ly/fcm201 8

For those who frequently find themselves using their mobile devices with one hand, Opera Touch might well be the best laid out mobile browser for this purpose. Combine that with the Flow feature and Opera is seriously onto something. Give Opera Touch a go and see if it doesn't wind up your default Android browser.

In an encouraging development for Linux enthusiasts, Canonical has expressed interest in shipping Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 with out-of-the-box Android integration, thanks to GS Connect–a GNOME Shell implementation of KDE Connect without KDE/Qt dependencies.

Just like KDE Connect, you can use GS Connect to get Android notifications on your Ubuntu Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/arti computer, share data, get device information, browse the file cle/opera-touch-is-a-dreamandroid-browser-for-users-who-are- manager, etc. always-on-the-go/ Canonical has also invited the developers from the community to contribute in the process.

U BUNTU 1 8.1 0 COSMIC CUTTLEFISH M AY I NCLUDE O UT-OF-THE-BOX ANDROID I NTEGRATION

The development work for this integration is expected to take place the way Ubuntu Dock and Dash-to-Dock were added to the Ubuntu desktop. It means that the f you’re reading this article, there developers won’t be forking the are great chances that you might project; they’ll be branching the be owning a computer as well as a upstream. Ubuntu’s Will Cooke has smartphone. In such case, very also hoped that someone would often we feel the need for a work on an iOS port of the KDE/GS seamless integration between both Connect mobile app. the devices. While Apple is known for how well its devices work with Meanwhile, before this feature each other, Microsoft has also been lands in Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 Cosmic making similar attempts. Cuttlefish, you can use the GS Connect app in Bionic Cuttlefish full circle magazine #1 33 10

and control your Android phone from Ubuntu desktop. Source: https://fossbytes.com/ubuntu-1 81 0-cosmic-cuttlefish-androidintegration-gs-connect/

CANONICAL SAYS THERE' S N O RULES AGAINST M INING CRYPTOCURRENCIES THROUGH S NAPS

ast week, users discovered that two of the snap packages uploaded by user Nicolas Tomb in the Snap Store, namely 2048buntu and Hextris, mined cryptocurrency in the background while the applications were running without user's knowledge. Canonical immediately removed the apps from its Snap Store. Now, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system is addressing the issue saying it has no rules against mining cryptocurrencies through snap apps if the developer informs users about this. As Nicolas Tomb didn't inform users that his apps are mining for cryptocurrencies, contents ^

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the apps were removed. Canonical also said that mining cryptocurrency is not illegal, nor unethical, so the only thing the publisher did wrong is not to inform users about his snap apps mining for cryptocurrency in the background. Nicolas Tomb informed Canonical that his goal was to "monetize software published under licenses that allow it." In the lengthy blog post, Canonical explains that it doesn't have the manpower to review hundreds of thousands of incoming source code lines from snap packages published in its Snap Store every single day. Therefore, it urges users to install apps only from trusted sources and developers.

Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/ canonical-says-there-s-no-rulesagainst-mining-cryptocurrenciesthrough-snaps-521 1 32.shtml

ENDLESS OS 3.4 RELEASED WITH N EW FEATURES, LINUX 4.1 5, AND PHONE COMPANION APP

ounded in 201 1 , Endless Mobile, Inc. develops Linuxbased Endless OS and hardware running the same. The firm has recently shipped Endless OS 3.4, the latest and major release of the operating system.

As it’s a big feature release, it goes without saying that Endless OS 3.4 comes with many changes and new features. Thanks to an With that in mind, the company updated open source core, 3.4 also promises to enforce the security of ships with stability and its Snap Store by implementing the performance improvements. ability to flag specific publishers as verified, helping users with their That being said, let’s tell you decision to install a certain snap about the major new features from the Snap Store, which shipping with Endless OS 3.4. currently contains more than 3,000 packages for open source and This release has gained the closed source apps. functionality of detecting what full circle magazine #1 33

kind of internet connection one is running; it’ll let you make sure that your system doesn’t try to suck tons of data on a limited data connection. In case Endless isn’t able to detect the type of connection, there’s a toggle to mark it manually. A special new feature for Android users is also coming to Endless OS. Called Endless Companion App, it’ll let you browse the content of your phone with ease and get notifications. In other improvements, there’s GNOME 3.26, Linux 4.1 5 kernel, polished applications, latest LibreOffice, etc. Source: https://fossbytes.com/endless-os3-4-released-new-featuresdownload/

CRITICAL LINUX FLAW O PENS THE D OOR TO FULL ROOT ACCESS

ed Hat has patched a vulnerability affecting the DHCP client packages that shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

and 7. A successful exploit could give an attacker root access and full control over enterprise endpoints. According to an alert issued Wednesday from US-CERT, the critical-rated flaw, first reported by Google researcher Felix Wilhelm, would “allow attackers to use malicious DHCP server responses to execute arbitrary commands on target systems over the local network,” if those systems use NetworkManager and are configured to obtain dynamic IP addresses. An attack would take advantage of the way the DHCP protocol is used to dynamically assign IP addresses to computers; i.e., the fact that the endpoint clients essentially broadcast out a query over the local network to obtain an address from a DHCP server. An attacker may be able to compromise the legitimate DHCP server itself in order to be able to send out the payload in the first place, Ayer added; or, he or she could set up a fake node on the network to masquerade as a legitimate DHCP server, sending out malicious, spoofed responses contents ^

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to normal network addressing queries. In both cases, the bad actor would need to be attached to the same local-area network as the targeted systems in order to exploit the flaw. Source: https://threatpost.com/criticallinux-flaw-opens-the-door-to-fullroot-access/1 32034/

B ODHI LINUX 5.0 ENTERS D EVELOPMENT B ASED ON U BUNTU 1 8.04 LTS, FIRST ALPHA I S O UT

ow that Canonical released Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), more and more Ubuntubased GNU/Linux distributions would want to upgrade to it for their next major releases, including Bodhi Linux with the upcoming 5.0 series. The first Alpha is here today to give us a glimpse of what to expect from the final release. Besides being based on Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS, the Bodhi Linux 5.0 operating system will be shipping with the forthcoming Moksha 0.3.0 desktop environment based on the

Enlightenment window manager/desktop environment, and it's powered by the Linux 4.9 kernel series. Also, it supports 32bit PAE and non-PAE systems. During the development cycle of Bodhi Linux 5.0, the development team will focus mainly on integrating the in-house built Moksha 0.3.0 desktop environment with the Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS base. That's why they don't recommend users to upgrade to Bodhi Linux 5.0 when its out later this summer, especially that Bodhi Linux 4.5.0 is supported until April 2021 .

today to inform that the latest Lubuntu 1 8.1 0 daily build is quite usable as he and his team did a lot of work in the past week to accommodate the LXQt desktop environment by default instead of the LXDE desktop environment. The main difference between LXDE and LXQt is that the former is written with the GTK+ 2 technologies, which will eventually be phased out in favor of the more advanced GTK+ 3, and the latter is built using the Qt framework. However, it doesn't look like there are any plans for LXDE to move to GTK+ 3.

daily build is now available for testing on both 64-bit and 32-bit architectures. Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/ hands-on-with-first-lubuntu-1 8-1 0build-featuring-the-lxqt-desktopby-default-521 200.shtml

500,000 ROUTERS I N 54 COUNTRIES H ACKED TO CREATE M ASSIVE B OTNET ARMY

he Cisco security research team has unearthed a hacking That's why LXQt was created in attack that targets more than Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/ the first place, as a fork of LXDE 500,000 consumer Wi-Fi routers. that offers computer users a bodhi-linux-5-0-entersThese infected routers can be used development-based-on-ubuntu-1 8- classic desktop environment with a to create a massive botnet army modern look and feel, and 04-lts-first-alpha-is-outand launch a heavyweight supported for a long time thanks 521 21 9.shtml cyberattack. to the Qt technologies, on which the popular KDE Plasma desktop As per the findings, this attack environment is built. H ANDS-O N WITH FIRST seems to be a work of some statesponsored actor. The malware LUBUNTU 1 8.1 0 B UILD Long story short, the first used to infect the devices, in this Lubuntu release with the LXQt FEATURING THE LXQ T case, has been termed VPNFilter. desktop environment by default As the malware shares lots of code D ESKTOP BY D EFAULT will be Lubuntu 1 8.1 0, due for with the BlackEnergy malware release on October 1 8, 201 8, as used to deploy large-scale attacks ubuntu developer Simon part of the Ubuntu 1 8.1 0 (Cosmic on Ukraine, it could be tied to the Quigley approached us earlier Cuttlefish) series. And the first full circle magazine #1 33 12 contents ^

NEWS

Russian government.

with the intelligence-collection process; it also has a self-destruct capability. The stage 3 modules further acts as plugins for stage 2 malware.

It’s worth noting that the Cisco report didn’t directly mention Russia but the code overlap surely hints the same. In a related development, the FBI has seized an Source: important server used in the https://fossbytes.com/routersattack. As per the agents, the hacked-botnet-army-vpnkillserver, ToKnowAll.com, was being malware/ used by Russian hackers to spread a second stage malware attack. Coming back to currently infected routers, the devices belong to major companies, including TP-Link, NETGEAR, Linksys, and MikroTik. The VPNFilter malware responsible for the attack is particularly concerning as it contains code to steal website credentials and make the infected router unusable. Moreover, it has “the potential of cutting off internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide.” This multistage, modular platform malware persists through a reboot in its initial stage. In the second stage, it uses different command and control mechanisms to find the IP address stage 2 deployment server and proceeds

PARROT 4.0 ETHICAL H ACKING LINUX D ISTRO RELEASED

hardware support. The official Parrot Docker templates have also been shipped. With Parrot on Docker, one can access the system on top of any work environment that supports Docker. Apart from Docker on Parrot, different images with bare system, complete environment with tools, and Metasploit container has also been made available.

In other changes, the sandboxed applications have been made more stable for better t goes without saying that Parrot security; nginx is the new default web server daemon; md raid 4.0 ships with all the fixes and support has been added by updated packages released since 3.1 1 apart from the new features. default; LibreOffice 6, Firefox 60, and MATE 1 .20 have been added. This release also took a lot more time as compared to previous Source: versions. https://fossbytes.com/parrot-4-0release-download-featuresStarting with 4.0, the hacking-linux/ developers have decided to ship netinstall images. It’ll enable the interested security researchers to create their customized working LIBREO FFICE 6.1 B ETA environment with only the bare ARRIVES N EXT WEEK FOR core and the software they need.

This version ships with Linux kernel 4.1 6, which includes tons of fixes, optimizations, and better full circle magazine #1 33

SECOND B UG H UNTING SESSION ON M AY 28 13

ow that the first bug hunting session, which took place last month on April 27 for the alpha milestone, was a success leading to 91 bugs (8 of them marked as critical and 4 already fixed) being reported by those who attended the event, it's time for a second bug hunting session at the end of May to discover and squash more of those pesky bugs and issues that may block the release of LibreOffice 6.1 . As mentioned before, the tests that will be performed during the second bug hunting session to find, report and triage bugs will be carried against the beta version of LibreOffice 6.1 , which should be available for download on all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows in the coming days. Users will be able to run LibreOffice 6.1 beta alongside LibreOffice 6.0. Once the beta is out, the Document Foundation could release a second beta throughout June if more bugs are discovered on May 28, and plan a third bug hunting session, which could be announced at a later date. According to the release schedule, contents ^

NEWS

at least three RC (Release Candidate) builds are planned throughout July, and the final release of the LibreOffice 6.1 office suite is expected in early August.

3639, which could let a local attacker expose sensitive information in vulnerable systems.

Canonical also notes the fact that to fully mitigate Spectre Variant 4, users must also update the processor microcode firmware. Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/l They've been working with Intel to offer future microcode updates ibreoffice-6-1 -beta-arrives-nextthat fully address Spectre Variant week-for-second-bug-hunting4, but AMD users will need to session-on-may-28-521 256.shtml contact their vendor for firmware updates. To enable the kernel for Spectre Variant 4, U BUNTU 1 8.04 LTS G ETS mitigations SSBD (Speculative Store Bypass FIRST KERNEL U PDATE WITH the Disable) feature is required on i386 (32-bit) and amd64 (64-bit) PATCH FOR SPECTRE machines, which will be VARIANT 4 FLAW implemented by BIOS vendors with future updates. Therefore, users anonical released the first must also ensure they're using the kernel security update for its latest BIOS version on their Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) computers. operating system to fix a security issue that affects this release of Canonical is urging all Ubuntu Ubuntu and its derivatives. 1 8.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) users to As you can imagine, the kernel update their systems as soon as possible and install the new kernel security update patches the version is made available for 32-bit Ubuntu 1 8.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) and 64-bit architectures, Amazon operating system against the Web Services (AWS), Microsoft recently disclosed Speculative Azure Cloud, and Google Cloud Store Buffer Bypass (SSBB) sidePlatform (GCP) systems, OEM channel vulnerability, also known as Spectre Variant 4 or CVE-201 8- processors, and cloud environments. full circle magazine #1 33

Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/ ubuntu-1 8-04-lts-gets-first-kernelupdate-with-patch-for-spectrevariant-4-flaw-521 248.shtml

FULL CIRCLE 201 8 SURVEY It's that time of the year again where we ask what you think of FCM, Ubuntu, and Linux. Some questions are a requirement, some you can skip over if not applicable.

Your answers will help shape Full Circle, so please use your constructive criticism. If you don't tell us what you think, or what we're doing wrong, then we won't know.

Survey URL: http://bit.ly/fcm201 8

contents ^

C O M M AN D & C O N Q U E R

Written by Lucas Westermann

’ve recently begun reading up on machine learning, due in large part to recent advances and news articles. Specifically, recent reports on Leela Zero (Go AI), combined with the AlphaGo documentary I recently watched on Netflix. So, for anyone who may be interested in this topic, I wanted to cover a few basic points. If you’re not sure what machine learning is - feel free to also read on!

WHAT IS IT? Machine learning is a term that is generally associated with artificial intelligence. While machine learning is used in creating artificial intelligence, it is not the same thing. Machine learning is the approach to teaching a computer how to accomplish a task without explicitly programming it. Personally, I think of it as teaching a computer to recognize patterns and extrapolate conclusions, which works fine for a basic understanding.

Here’s an example - say you want to create an application capable of recognizing ingredients for a recipe from a single image. Programmatically, you’d have to define all the visual variables and somehow write a program to classify the key points properly and reach a conclusion. However, using machine learning, you would instead teach it by showing it images - various pictures of flour, eggs, butter, etc. By having control over your sample size (and correctly identifying them in advance), you can train your application to recognize what the images represent. Once the program understands the individual parts, you could train it to then recognize them in larger images.

M a c h i n e L e a rn i n g

learning at its core only develops so-called “dumb” AI. This is essentially a piece of software that is extremely good at doing one task - in the example above, recognizing ingredients in photos. So far, any kind of AI we have or use falls into this category. And in the case of machine learning, I would make the case that not all applications are automatically AI for me, AI implies a level of intelligence beyond “If A do B”, but more reasoning along the lines “If A is true, then perhaps Y or Z would be better than B”.

WHO NEEDS AI/MACHINE LEARNING ?

These both deal with massive amounts of data that would need to be continually updated (for every new face, for example). Instead, we use machine learning to allow a program to recognize the same face (or pet), or to find similar products in a growing assortment.

I SN ’T THIS A NEW TECHNOLOGY? The term “machine learning” was actually coined in 1 959. And the concept, as such, has been around just as long. Until recently, however, the average computer was not up to the task and so research and availability of machine learning was severely limited. With the increase in computing power and the fall in costs, this has allowed more people to begin working with these systems.

Machine learning is generally applied in fields of study where explicit programming would fail I S THIS AI? due to the sheer amount of information and analysis the It depends on your definition of programmer would have to AI. In the Sci-Fi world, AI is often account for. Specifically, things like portrayed as (essentially) a super facial recognition (such as on H OW DOES IT WORK? intelligent digital being (who often Facebook or Google Photos), or concludes that the human race is recommendation engines (such as There are new techniques and the cause of any number of Amazon’s recommended products). approaches that we have started problems). However, machine full circle magazine #1 33 15 contents ^

COMMAND & CONQUER to use. The most popular/common one seems to currently be the idea of a neural network, and is also what all of my examples typically describe. A neural network is very loosely inspired by biological neural networks (ie, the human brain), and is an interconnected group of neurons that have a specific function. Take the example of recognizing specifics of pets the machine would learn aspects from a set of manually labelled images. And each neuron may be in charge of a defining trait (ie, does it have fur?). When an unknown image is input, the system then “fires” each of these neurons, and therefore eliminates possibilities until it has a reasonable chance at guessing correctly.

this is a step further from machine learning. While machine learning is dedicated to teaching systems to recognize specific patterns or accomplish specific tasks, deep learning is more abstract. Take AlphaGo for example - it was taught the rules of Go and was fed basic data from a few Go records. However, it then began playing against itself and learning from those encounters. As such, it didn’t have a specific goal in mind (beyond “play Go”). This application of pitting two versions of the system against each other helped AlphaGo learn the uncommon strategies it employed against Go professionals.

It also approaches the game with a fundamentally different method than human players. It is very certain in its ability to count the points on the board. As such, while human players may use moves to gain a substantial lead in points due to their uncertainty in counting, AlphaGo will instead focus on the percentage chance a move has to win the game regardless of whether it wins by one point or one hundred. So while a human player may attempt a desperate move to increase their lead, it may have a lower chance of succeeding, while a safer move that keeps its lead the same will be preferred by AlphaGo.

There are other approaches decision trees, association rule learning, etc. But in most cases, the basic approach is the same give the system a set of prepared data to train it, and then begin testing unlabeled data.

CAN WE LEARN FROM AI? Yes! AlphaGo released a teaching tool a while back, that essentially shows the decisions for each move it makes (represented as percentages). In doing so, people have discovered that AlphaGo believes the komi (the points white receives for going second in a game of Go which has steadily increased over the years) currently puts black at a disadvantage from the beginning of the game (the opening moves are all under 50% chance of winning). This has led professionals to re-examine some of the assumptions about the game. It has also popularized a few moves that were previously deemed “bad” and led to new styles. It has also massively increased the popularity of Go around the world (after AlphaGo played against Lee Sedol there was a worldwide shortage of Go boards).

H OW CAN I GET INTO MACHINE LEARNING ?

WHAT ABOUT ALPHAG O AND LEELA ZERO ? Both of these AIs use something called deep learning full circle magazine #1 33

This depends on your current knowledge. If you’re comfortable in Python, the Google Developers YouTube channel has a good contents ^

COMMAND & CONQUER introduction to machine learning. A great deal of languages have machine learning packages, and so you should look for a tutorial in your language of choice. To get started, you shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need any hardware outside of a relatively modern computer.

D ISCLAIMER

FURTHER I NFORMATION https://youtu.be/lvzekeBQsSo Part 2 of a series. The video creates a recommendation engine for color schemes in the web. https://youtu.be/cKxRvEZd3Mw Part 1 of the Google Developer series (Python).

I feel that (in this type of article) I should clearly state that I am not an expert, and all details found here are my best understanding of the available facts and information Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found. As such, there may be mistakes.

https://www.tensorflow.org/ - An open source machine learning framework

I hope this article has inspired you (or informed you). If anyone has noticed any issues or corrections (or has a great resource for learning), feel free to email them to me. Similarly, if you have requests for articles or feedback for this one, you can reach me at lswest34+fcm@gmail.com.

https://github.com/gcp/leela-zero Leela Zero

https://www.alphagomovie.com/ the AlphaGo documentary (available on Netflix).

Lucas has learned all he knows from

repeatedly breaking his system, then having no other option but to discover how to fix it. You can email Lucas at: lswest34@gmail.com.

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H O W-TO

Written by Greg Walters

P yt h o n I n T h e R E AL W o rl d - P t . 8 3 from the receiver. Note that the message can be sent multiple times to the receiver until the PUBACK is sent back to the sender.

ast month, we took a brief look at MQTT.

This month, we'll continue our discussion of MQTT, especially how MQTT can support quality of service and then we'll modify our original program from Full Circle issue #1 09 to support MQTT.

Q OS QoS stands for Quality of Service. MQTT supports three levels, numbered 0, 1 and 2. If you don't have to be sure that those who are subscribed to your topic messages, then you simply use a QoS of 0. Here is a breakdown of the levels:

LEVEL 2 As you can see from the diagram, the client sends a publish message to the broker and the acknowledged by the receiver 0 - At most once broker sends back a PUBREC. The (broker or client), nor will it be 1 - At Least once sender then stores a reference to stored and re-delivered by the 2 - Exactly once the packet identifier, which is then sender. stored and then sends out a When the broker transfers a PUBREL message. If the receiver message to a subscribing client, it LEVEL 1 responds with a PUBCOMP uses the QoS of the subscription message, the sender then knows it made by the receiving client Using Level 1 is guaranteed that can safely discard the message and a message will be delivered at least reference. If a message gets lost once to the receiver (publisher to LEVEL 0 somewhere along the way, the broker or broker to subscriber). sender (either the publishing client Level 0 guarantees a best effort The sender stores the message or the broker) is responsible for reuntil it receives a PUBACK message delivery. The message won't be

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HOWTO - PYTHON sending the last message.

Of course, QoS Level 1 is faster than Level 2, since there are only two messages to deal with where Level 2 has four and QoS Level 0 is faster than Level 1 . When the broker sends a message to a subscribing client, the QoS used is what the client used when subscribing to the topic. Therefore, the QoS can be downgraded from what the publishing client intends. When should you use one level over another? Basically if your publishing client doesn't need to worry if there might be a missed transmission or two, and your connection to the broker is reliable 24/7, you could pretty much feel safe to use Qos Level 0. If you need to have a guarantee that the published message will get to (or from) the broker with somewhere near complete assurance that the messages will make it through, then use Level 1 . If a message absolutely positively must get through, then use Level 2, but remember, nothing in life is 1 00% perfect, especially when relying on connecting to a broker (on either end) via an external connection to

and install the library. If you don’t currently have the library, you can find it on GitHub at https://github.com/adafruit/Adafr uit_Python_DHT.git . Remember, you have to install the library on the Raspberry Pi. Here are the steps to clone the library from github. cd /home/pi git clone https://github.com/adafruit/A dafruit_Python_DHT.git cd Adafruit_Python_DHT sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install buildessential python-dev pythonopenssl sudo python setup.py install

The sample code is in the /examples folder, called simpletest.py. Be sure to change the internet. used a DHT1 1 connected to our Raspberry Pi. We used the Adafruit the line that defines which pin We will be using a Qos Level 1 DHT22 python library and slightly your sensor is on to match your setup. The original code assumes for our communications in our modified their sample code. your are putting the data pin of demo, just for practice. the sensor on GPIO 23 (line 35). In I’ve recreated the Fritzing the setup I present, use GPIO 4. diagram showing the hardware THE H ARDWARE Also be sure to comment out line connections… 31 if you are using a Raspberry Pi If you remember the original instead of a Beaglebone board. Once you have the hardware all project we did back in FCM 1 09, we set up, now we have to download full circle magazine #1 33 19 contents ^

HOWTO - PYTHON

Here is our updated code (right, and continuing on to the next page). You can try modifying the original code, or just start over. It’s not that long. In those last lines (next page), we check to make sure that we got data from the sensor, and if so, we create two messages, one containing the humidity value and one containing the temperature value. In the next two lines, we actually publish the messages. Notice that we are using a QoS value of 1 with a retain value of True. This should ensure delivery if the broker is there and if there are any clients listening for our data. Finally, we sleep for 5 seconds and repeat the loop. Feel free to change the sleep value to whatever you wish over 5. The DHT1 1 /22 doesn’t like to be accessed more than about once every 5 seconds. A realistic value would be somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds. client.publish(MQTT_PATH1,hms g,qos=1,retain=True) client.publish(MQTT_PATH2,tms g,qos=1,retain=True) else:

#!/usr/bin/python # -*- coding: utf-8 -*# ================================================================ # simpletest.py # ---------------------------------------------------------------# Code modified from Adafruit sample code simpletest.py from the # DHT library # ---------------------------------------------------------------# Modifications by G.D. Walters for Full Circle Magazine #132 # ================================================================

Here are our imports, the Adafruit DHT library, the paho library and the time library. import Adafruit_DHT # import the paho library # also import the time library for the sleep function import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt from time import sleep

MQTT_SERVER is the IP address of my RPi where the broker is running. Yours would probably be different, so put your IP in here. As to the path definitions, you can keep mine, or use your own. # Set some global definitions MQTT_SERVER = '192.168.1.224' MQTT_PATH1 = 'greghouse/dht22/humidity' MQTT_PATH2 = 'greghouse/dht22/temperature'

I’m using a DHT22 in my system. Simply change the ‘DHT.DHT22’ to ‘DHT.DHT1 1 ’ if you are using the other DHT sensor. sensor = Adafruit_DHT.DHT22 pin = 4 sleep(3)

# GPIO Input pin for data from the sensor Physical pin 7 # Wait 3 seconds before starting up for things to stabilize…

If you remember from last month, the function on_connect() is a callback that runs whenever the program connects to the broker. We make the initial topic subscribe calls here. def on_connect(client,userdata,flags, rc): print('Connected with result code ' + str(rc)) client.subscribe(MQTT_PATH1) client.subscribe(MQTT_PATH2) [CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE]

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contents ^

HOWTO - PYTHON The on_message() callback function is, in this case, only really to verify that messages are being published to the broker. # The callback for when a PUBLISH message is received from the broker. def on_message(client, userdata, msg): print(msg.topic+' '+str(msg.payload)) # more callbacks, etc.

Here we create our MQTT client and define the callback routines and connect to the broker. client = mqtt.Client() client.on_connect = on_connect client.on_message = on_message client.connect(MQTT_SERVER, 1883, 60)

We enter a while loop to keep processing the sensor. This will continue until the program is halted by a keyboard interrupt <Ctrl-C>. while 1: humidity, temperature = Adafruit_DHT.read_retry(sensor, pin) # Temp in centigrade temperaturec = temperature # Temp in fahrenheit temperaturef = temperature * 9/5.0 + 32

In the above lines, we get the humidity and raw temperature data. We also convert the temperature from centigrade to fahrenheit. Sorry, but I have a REAL hard time thinking in metric. if humidity is not None and temperature is not None: # If using Celsius, change the '*F' to '*C' # and use temperaturec print('Temp={0:0.1f}*F Humidity={1:0.1f}%'.format(

(be sure the broker is running BEFORE you start the program). Next, run mosquitto_sub on the RPi subscribing to one or both of the topics we set up in our program. You should see a message each time the loop runs. I’ve put our new program on Pastebin at https://pastebin.com/gqPLNsiw, just in case you don’t want to do all the typing. Next month, our project will be a GUI subscriber client to monitor our sensors. This client can be either on the RPi or on another computer on your network. In fact, if you use a public broker, you can monitor it from anywhere in the world. Until then, have a great month.

temperaturef, humidity)) hmsg = '{0:0.1f}'.format(humidity) # Change the next line to temperaturec if you want to # publish in centigrade tmsg = '{0:0.1f}'.format(temperaturef) print('Failed to get reading. Try again!') sleep(5)

Of course, I’m assuming that your broker is running on the same Raspberry Pi. If not, be sure the full circle magazine #1 33

Greg Walters is owner of RainyDay

change the IP address that MQTT_SERVER pointing to. Now you can run your program

Solutions, LLC, a consulting company in Aurora, Colorado, and has been programming since 1 972. He enjoys cooking, hiking, music, and spending time with his family. contents ^

H O W-TO

F re e p l a n e - P t 4

Written by Elmer Perry

hen you learn or create, associations speed up the process. By associating something known with something new, you fix the idea in your mind. You can take the new idea and associate it with another idea, creating a chain of ideas. Many of the great thinkers of history used association in their work. One most people are familiar with is Leonardo da Vinci. In his work, he created pictures, Clouds group a node and its codes, and lines. These "doodles" children, grandchildren, etc. You created associations between can use the cloud to emphasize a ideas. certain section of a branch by creating a border around the Mind maps let you develop nodes. The cloud surrounds the associations through their node and those attached to it connections between nodes. But connections are not always direct. down the branch until it reaches the leaves. The cloud will enclose An idea in one branch could any nodes added to the cloud's associate with an idea in another branch. Or a portion of a branch is nodes. more important than the rest. You To create a cloud, you select the could find a group of sibling ideas node where you want the cloud to that lead to another idea by their begin. On the keyboard, you use association. In Freeplane, you can create these connections through the keyboard combination CTRL + SHIFT + B. The cloud will surround clouds, connectors, and summary all the nodes connected to the nodes. selected node. You can add a cloud through the menus using Edit > CLOUDS full circle magazine #1 33

the Tool Panel. From the menu, you select Format > Cloud shape.

Add/Remove Cloud. The menu item is also available in the rightclick context menu. The main toolbar has a Cloud button, too. Repeating the action on the node will remove the cloud. If you select a node inside a cloud, you can create a cloud inside a cloud. By default the shape of the cloud is the Arc style, creating the classical idea of a cloud. You have other options for the cloud shape. You can select from Arc, Star, Rectangle, and Rounded rectangle. In your code, the different shapes can have different meanings. Star for something exciting, or rectangle for something serious. To change the shape, use the dropdown list in the Cloud section of

Color is another way to code your maps, and Freeplane lets you change the color of the clouds. The cloud color changes the background and outline color of the cloud. As you have seen in previous articles, you select colors from a color dialog. To open the cloud color dialog, you can click on the color swatch in the Cloud section of the Tool Panel. You can access the cloud color through the menus, too, at Format > Cloud shape > Cloud color. Finally, the main toolbar has an icon for the cloud color. From the color picker dialog, you select the color you want for your cloud background. You click the OK button to accept the color.

CONNECTORS Connectors associate nodes with relationships other than parent-child. Connectors are good for connections between siblings or nodes in different branches. As an example, a group of siblings contents ^

HOWTO - FREEPLANE

defining a repeatable process. A connector would allow you to loop the last process back to the first one. The connector can contain text to explain the relationship. Arrows can show the direction of the connection. You can edit the line style, color, and thickness to match your coding system. The easiest way to create a node is to right-click on the start node and drag to the end node. By default, an arrow points toward the end node. You can change this, but it's worth thinking about before you create the connector. You can also select the start node and hold down SHIFT + CTRL while you drag with the left mouse button to the end node. Finally, you can select the start and end nodes, right-click, and select Connect from the menu. With two nodes selected, you can use the CTRL + L combination to connect

the nodes.

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You can connect many nodes at once. Select the nodes you want to connect. The last node selected becomes the focus node. All the other nodes will point to the focus node. With the nodes selected, you right-click and select Connect from the menu. You can use the CTRL + L combination, too. All the selected nodes will connect to the focus node (last selected).

to increase the visibility. By default, the slider is 75% to the right.

The Connector arrow dropdown list lets you select the arrows on the connector. You select None to create a relationship without direction. Draw arrow forward points the arrow at the endpoint. To point the arrow at the start point, you select Draw arrow back. You show a back You can edit a connector by right-clicking it. A Connector dialog and forth relationship by selecting Draw arrow forward and back. One will open. The dialog lets you of the ways I have used the arrows change the style, color, shape, is when creating a repeating thickness, and opacity of the connector. You can add text to the process. The process is outlined as a series of sibling nodes, then the connect to define the reason for last sibling points back to the first the connection. sibling. Using this method, I create a looping or repeating process. The two Goto buttons let you select which node is active. You By default, the connector is can switch between the two nodes drawn as a looping curve. The at the connectors endpoints. Connector shape drop-down list The Remove Connector button changes the shape. You select line removes the connector and closes to create a straight point-to-point line. Linear path draws a line with the connector dialog. sharp corners. Finally, you can Simulate edge. This choice will Use the Opacity slider to create a line that simulates the increase or decrease the visibility edge of the endpoint. of the connector. Move the slider to the left to decrease the The Connector line drop-down visibility, and move it to the right list sets the type of line. As always,

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HOWTO - FREEPLANE

you have a choice between solid, long dash, short dash, dot, and dotdash. The line types can become a part of your code. A dotted line can show two nodes that are similar but have no direct relationship. But a solid line can show a direct relationship, such as a node that is a child of two different nodes. The Width spinner box sets the width of the line. The width is a scale value rather than a unit measurement. The font setting controls the font and size of the text used on the connector. The Font dropdown list selects the font from the fonts installed on your PC. The Font size spinner box sets the size in points. With the font set, the connector has three label positions. The top text box is for the Source label. The source label is the start node of the connector. The Middle label places text in the middle of the connector. To place a label at the endpoint node, enter your text in the Target label text box. If you use the source and target label, you need to set the connector to show in front of the nodes. The setting is in the preferences, Tools > Preferences.

Click on the Appearance tab. In the Connectors section, you uncheck the box for Paint connectors behind nodes.

child node for each of the nodes stating its food category. But this seems redundant and timeconsuming.

There are a couple of alternate methods for creating summary nodes. After selecting the node series, you can right-click and choose New summary node. From Click the OK button to close the Enter the summary node. A the menus, Edit > New Node > New Connector dialog. summary node groups together a summary node creates a summary series of sibling nodes using a curly node of the selected sibling nodes. When you left-click the bracket. The summary node allows connector, you see two adjustment you to group your fruits and When you create and learn, handles. You drag the handles to vegetables using one node for associations allow you to build on adjust the shape and location of each group. previous knowledge. While the the connector. Moving the handles parent-child relationship handles moves the location of the arrows To create a summary node, most associations, sometimes you and labels. This is another method select the series of sibling nodes. need to create others. Freeplane to prevent the label and nodeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s With the nodes selected, press the gives you the tools you need to core from blocking each other. keyboard combination SHIFT + ALT create those associations. With the + INSERT. The summary node cloud, you can encompass a group created looks like any node except of nodes, creating a section set off SUMMARY N ODES its edge is a curly bracket. Enter from the others. You can use connectors to associate two nodes What do you do when you need the text of the node and press ENTER. You can press ENTER again that are not parent-child. Finally, a node that pertains to several to create a sibling of the node, or summary nodes allow you to group sibling nodes? For example, say you can press INSERT to create a sibling nodes together. you have a list of fruits and child node. From the summary vegetables as siblings to a node. You would like to label which ones node, your map can continue as you would with any other node. are fruits and which ones are vegetables. You could create a Elmer Perry is a technical support

rep for an international keyless access company. He enjoys writing, woodworking, and technology. He lives in Leicester, NC with his wife.

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H O W-TO

Written by Chad Homan

h, that time of year is here again. A new Ubuntu release. There are typically two thoughts on updating; fresh and upgrade. This article will focus on the upgrade. The rolling upgrade can be time consuming though, downloading all those new packages. What if I told you that we can speed up our upgrade to 1 8.04.

Fa st Relea se U pg ra d e Wi th a pt-fa st

upgrade to 1 8.04. Many user’s might be upgrading from 1 6.04 or 1 7.1 0, heck there might even be some upgrading from 1 4.04. Either way, guess what, you can use aptfast to speed up your release upgrades.

While it’s possible to use this even with the upgrade GUI. I’ll focus on the command line tool; do-release-upgrade. So what do we need to do to perform such a Well we can; using apt-fast we miracle? Multiple terminals, that’s can make your updates go about what. Or some tmux/screen 30% faster. While I am thinking about it, here is a link to the github knowledge**. page: https://github.com/ilikenwf/aptLET’S GET STARTED fast. But for those just reading on, what is apt-fast? First off, you’ll need two terminals. But may I suggest three. In short, apt-fast (ppa:aptConsider it a safety thing. I’ll fast/stable) is a wrapper around explain as we go. apt-get or apt, and that uses aria2c to perform a multithreaded Step 1 : In Terminal 1 , execute download of the needed updates. the do-release-upgrade command But what if we could use apt-fast as in figure 1 . One may notice I am to assist in a release upgrade - to passing a “-d” switch. This is to

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check the beta channels for an update. Use this switch at your own risk. Otherwise you’ll need to wait until after the final release.

When you see the prompt, acknowledge it by pressing the “enter” key. The update will now refresh to the new release repos.

Step 2: After you launch the command, your repository information will be updated to pull the new release. If you use PPAs on your system, you will see something like the image shown above, alerting you that they will be disabled. If you do not use PPAs, you may move on to Step 3.

Step 3: This is very important if you are going to speed up the release upgrade. When you see what is shown in the image below, DO NOTHING .

When you see this prompt, it is time to move to a new terminal.

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HOWTO - UPGRADE WITH APT-FAST Proceed to Step 4.

Remember DO NOTHING...

Step 4: In a new terminal window. Enter the dist-upgrade command as shown above.

Step 6: When the dist-upgrade command is finished downloading, you may close your safety terminal. start installing packages. In the terminal representative of NOTE: Do not add the “-y” flag to Figure 7, enter “n”. That’s right, we This is where your system will this command. do not want to continue. Why? dictate when you will finish upgrading as CPU, RAM, drive When you hit enter, all the Other things happen in the do- speed, all come into play. At the required packages for the release release-upgrade command; such as end of the package installation, upgrade will be downloaded using removing obsolete packages. We you will be prompted to remove the aria2c multithreaded want to take advantage of this. So obsolete packages. Then you will download manager. Your terminal enter “n” and close the terminal. be prompted to reboot the system will look like the image below. Now we come “full circle” to to finish the upgrade. terminal 1 . Step 5: This is a good time to Congratulations, not only have open a third terminal and keep it in That’s right, we are now ready you now learned how to speed-up focus. It’s really easy to mess this to proceed with the upgrade. Enter the release upgrade. But you have up, and this helps to prevent other “y”. Here’s what will happen next. also made it through my first issues. Off jog the window a bit so The system will attempt to article. So thanks for reading. My you can see when the dist-upgrade download the required packages hope is that you like the extra command is done running. When it and notice that they are already bump in speed, and add this looks like the image top right, downloaded. So then it will process to your 6-month or 3-year proceed to the next step. commence with the upgrade and update plans. A couple of notes

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before I let you go.

N OTES • Try this in a VM before a physical system, remember snapshots. Get familiar with the flow. • Remember your PPAs are disabled. • This works with the upgrade GUI. Follow the prompts to know when to perform the dist-upgrade. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the following flow as a cheatsheet.

CHEAT SHEET TERMINAL 1 :

• Execute the do-release-upgrade command: • sudo do-release-upgrade • If you’re bold, you may also do this with the do-release-upgrade -d, but I suggest you try this first in a VM to get comfortable with the process. contents ^

HOWTO - UPGRADE WITH APT-FAST • If you do not use PPAs, continue TERMINAL 3: to the next bullet. If you do use

will casually move on to the next step; Installing the packages... PPAs, you’ll eventually see a • This is where apt-fast may not • When you open the third prompt that they will be disabled. terminal, move it a bit out of the seem like a winner. But it is. While Hit yes and let the process way so that you can SEE terminal 2. installing the updates, this part of continue. the process is plagued by your hardware: RAM, CPU, drive speed. • Just wait, since terminal 2 is • ALERT. Had to get your • At the end of this, you;ll be downloading multithread style, it attention. You’ll eventually see a prompted to remove obsolete should only take a few minutes. large prompt saying: software, go ahead and enter “y”. • X number of packages are • At the end of this, you’ll be • When you notice Terminal 2 obsolete prompted to reboot the system, go finished, it will be prompting you • Y number of packages are new to continue. The ANSWER is no. ahead and enter “y” • Z number of packages will be updated. TERMINAL 2: • STOP STOP, just read. • Then a prompt saying “press y • Return to terminal 2 and enter ‘n’ to continue”. to leave the apt-fast command. That was easy. Let’s go back to • DON’T do anything, Move on to terminal 1 . the next section.

TERMINAL 2: • Execute the apt-fast command: • sudo apt-fast dist-upgrade • DO NOT use the “-y”. But go ahead and hit enter once.

TERMINAL 1 : • Now we’re ready to continue with the release upgrade. • Enter ‘y’ to continue.

• Here’s what will happen: • This is where I suggest a third • The next step for do-releaseterminal and put it in focus. It’s far upgrade is to download all too easy to mess things up. And I’m required packages. But we just did here to say this is safe. that using apt-fast. • So, when do-release-upgrade notices the cache is up-to-date, it full circle magazine #1 33

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H O W-TO

Written by Mark Crutch

ver the past six years, this series has detailed just about every part of Inkscape, from basic shapes through to more complex features such as filters and path effects. With nothing more to cover, it’s time for this column to take a sharp turn from its previous tack: I’m going to look at how you can use graphics you’ve created in Inkscape on the world wide web.

above.

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raster image is no longer infinitely scalable in the same way as a On the surface, this might seem The first method is to simply vector image. You also lose any like a simple task – worthy of an avoid the whole SVG question concept of the individual objects instalment or two at most. But SVG entirely and export your image to a that made up the image, so it’s not is unlike any other graphics format; PNG file – possibly even converting possible to manipulate them its XML heritage lends it to the it to a JPEG afterwards to reduce individually using CSS animations same kind of manipulation with the file size, if the image doesn’t or JavaScript. CSS and JavaScript as HTML, require transparency. The allowing for graphical tricks that resultant raster image can be The second approach relies on go way beyond simply displaying a included in a web page via an the fact that most modern static image on a page. At the <img> tag, used on social media browsers do a pretty decent job of same time, you still have the sites or blogs, and generally be rendering SVG – so why not just option to treat SVG as a dumb treated the same way as a photo use the SVG file directly, rather image format, if that’s a better fit from a phone or digital camera. than converting to a raster format for your requirements. Because you’re effectively creating first? This is as simple as a snapshot of the image as it referencing an SVG file in your Broadly speaking, there are appears in Inkscape, you also don’t <img> tag, rather than a PNG or four ways to include an Inkscapehave to worry about missing fonts, JPEG. Because the internal created image in a web page. Each flowed text, or mismatches in structure of your SVG is preserved, has its own pros and cons, which browsers’ rendering engines. The the browser knows about are outlined in the table shown downside is that the exported individual objects, so can animate full circle magazine #1 33 28

them using CSS. In theory it could also allow JavaScript, but that’s prevented when using images like this, for security reasons. What does security have to do with an SVG image, you may wonder. Consider that many social media platforms, forums, and other websites, will let you upload your own SVG file, then expose it to other people on the site by using an <img> tag. This would effectively give a malicious user a means to run their own JavaScript under the guise of the hosting website. The code could capture user’s keypresses, spoof a login dialog to record passwords, or redirect the user to another site entirely. Given that being able to upload an SVG file to a site and contents ^

HOWTO - INKSCAPE

have it rendered as an image is generally a good thing, but that unfettered permission to run JavaScript in such a file could easily be abused, browsers take the sensible approach of allowing CSS animations to run (giving SVG an edge over raster images), but disallowing any JavaScript.

format, however, it can be much more of a problem. Consider something like a comic strip: if the text is rendered at the wrong size it might not fit the speech bubbles; if it’s rendered in a different font it could change the feel of the narrative entirely. For this reason, I post all my comic strips as PNG or JPEG images, and link to the SVG Unfortunately this method does files separately where I want to come with one big drawback – make the source files available for though it’s a problem that people to download. diminishes every year. Because you are relying on your browser’s The third approach is essentially rendering engine to draw each another way of linking to an SVG object in your image, you no longer file, but this time it uses the have complete control over the <object> element rather than an appearance of your image. For <img>. Whereas forums and social simple drawings, this isn’t media sites are happy to expose a generally a problem. But add in user’s file via an <img> link, they more advanced features, such as tend not to do the same via filters, and the output of the <object> – so, if you want to take browsers begins to diverge. this approach, you need to be able to edit the underlying HTML Text rendering is a particularly directly. This usually implies that significant problem. If the person you are creating content for your viewing the image doesn’t have own domain, rather than just the same font installed on their uploading something to a thirdmachine that you used to create party site. What you gain from this the document in the first place, it extra requirement is an enhanced will be replaced with a different level of trust from the browser, font. In HTML, this can be allowing JavaScript in your image annoying, but usually the browser to execute. With sufficient adjusts the page layout a little and knowledge and experience, it’s no real harm is done. In an image even possible to create two-way full circle magazine #1 33

interactions between code on the page and in your image. But, again, you’re also at the whim of the browser in terms of the final rendering of your file. The last approach is a relatively recent option. For years, SVG was neglected by the web developer community, largely because Microsoft refused to support it in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, at a time when it commanded the majority share of the market. But with later releases, Microsoft softened their stance, adding SVG support and paving the way for SVG to be promoted to a first-class citizen in the world of HTML5. Now, you can put a chunk of SVG code directly into your HTML and it will just work. And if you’re hand-coding your SVG, you no longer have to concern yourself with the complexities of namespaces in XML – just use the SVG tags in the same way as you would HTML. With this last method, the SVG is a direct part of your web page, so writing code to manipulate the image is much simpler than with the <object> approach. But it does mean that your SVG code is right there in the middle of your HTML.

If all you’re doing is drawing a couple of simple objects, that might not be so bad, but including all the code from a complex drawing can quickly overwhelm the rest of your page, making it harder to work with the surrounding HTML. And, once more, your browser’s rendering engine might make poor work of your image. Enough theory, let’s put it into practice. Next month, I’ll describe how to use <object> and inline SVG, but, this time, we’ll deal with the <img> methods. Begin by loading a simple image into Inkscape, or creating one from scratch if necessary. I’m going to work with this basic circle (the square around it is the Inkscape canvas):

Let’s export this to a PNG image via the File > Export PNG Image… contents ^

HOWTO - INKSCAPE

menu item. This opens a dialog in which to set the details for the export:

Now comes the most important decision: how big do you want your image to be? This is set in the Image Size section, by adjusting the image dimensions or dpi (dots per inch). For web use, you can generally ignore the dpi option and go straight for setting the width and height in pixels. If you’re creating an image for a profile picture or banner ad, you’ll usually be told the dimensions your graphic must be. Note, however, that you can’t set these fields independently, so you’ll either have to create your design to the right proportions, or export a larger area that you can then crop in a bitmap editor such as The GIMP or Krita.

you have to click the Export button. You should now have a PNG file on disk that can be uploaded to just about any site that accepts user images. If you want to use it in your own HTML page, that’s easy too. If you’re already familiar with writing HTML then you almost certainly know how to link to your image. But if you’ve never written a line of HTML in your life, why not give it a try now – it’s not as tricky as you might think. In a text editor type the code shown below.

choice, press CTRL-O to open the file selector, and load your HTML file. You should see a text heading with your PNG image displayed below it.

That wasn’t too tricky, was it? Linking directly to an SVG file is just as simple. If your original Inkscape file isn’t in the same directory as the HTML file, use File > Save a Copy… to put a copy of it there. When you look in the directory you should now see your HTML file, your exported PNG, and an SVG file. To get the latter to appear in your web page, just add Modify the “circle.png” string to the following lines below the suit the filename of your own PNG, existing image link: and save the document into the <h1>IMG tag (SVG)</h1> same directory as the exported I covered this dialog way back in <img src="circle.svg"></img> The last setting required is the image, making sure to give the part 1 2 of this series, but, for the filename an extension of “.html”. filename to export to. Click the purposes of creating a PNG to use Export As… button and navigate to Open the web browser of your Save the file, switch to your online, you can ignore many of the your destination folder in the file <!DOCTYPE html> options. You do need to decide selector. Enter a filename in the what to export using the buttons <html> selector, making sure it ends in at the top: usually this will be the “.png”, and then use the file <head> entire page, the entirety of your <title>SVG in HTML</title> selector’s Save button to return drawing (which could be larger or your selected location and name to </head> smaller than the page), or a the export dialog. Despite the <body> rectangle that encompasses the <h1>IMG tag (PNG)</h1> name of the button, this won’t currently selected objects. I’ve <img src="circle.png"></img> have saved a PNG file anywhere; </body> chosen to export the whole page, it’s just saved the export location. as I want to include a little bit of </html> In order to actually save the file, blank space around my circle. full circle magazine #1 33 30 contents ^

HOWTO - INKSCAPE

browser, and press F5 to reload the page. You should see both your PNG image and the SVG version. There’s a good chance that the images aren’t the same size, but SVG files are scalable so we can fix that easily. Given that my PNG was exported at 250px in width, I can modify the <img> tag for the SVG file to set it to the same: <img src="circle.svg" width="250"></img>

Another press of F5 in the

larger? Try setting a width attribute on both of them, with a value of 1 000 or more. Notice how blocky the PNG becomes, whilst the SVG is still rendered as smoothly as possible. That’s the main advantage of using an SVG file in a web page instead of a PNG.

will let you use an SVG image wherever a raster is allowed. But although the browser might be happy to do that, many websites still only let you upload pure raster formats such as PNG, GIF and JPEG. If you write your own HTML you have full control over what formats to use, but if you’re trying to Linking to an image via an upload an image to a third party <img> tag is a common way to site you may find your options display user-submitted images on limited. If you can use an SVG, the web. But, when coding your though, I encourage you to do so. own pages, images are often used Only by ever more SVG content in other ways as well, typically via making its way online will browser CSS. You can use an SVG file vendors have an incentive to wherever you would usually use a provide better support for the PNG in these cases. For example, format, and the SVG working let’s fill the background of our web group have a chance to introduce page with copies of the SVG file more of the new features that using this chunk of CSS, inserted would make this useful format between the </head> and <body> even better. sections of the HTML code: <style> body { background: url("circle.svg"); background-size: 50px;

Mark uses Inkscape to create three

}

webcomics, 'The Greys', 'Monsters, Inked' and 'Elvie', which can all be found at http://www.peppertop.com/

</style>

browser and you should find that both images are the same size. But Reload the page to see the what if we wanted them both to be result. As a rule, modern browsers full circle magazine #1 33

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R E S E AR C H I N G W I T H L I N U X

Written by S. J. Webb

ecently, Microsoft announced that Linux will be a subsystem operation in Windows 1 0. My research institutes employs Linux in various forms. Unfortunately, as an end user I am in the crux between our software developers and our ITS. The developers write programs using Linux, but it is not supported by our ITS. The developers are offsite, so our natural support group, ITS, shuts down and refuses to service the Linux ecosystem. So, I am left wondering would a linux subsystem suffice for our needs and force ITS to support the laptop? Can we drift away from dual booting? These are just a few of my thoughts. Perhaps it would be beneficial to review the Linux subsystem in Windows 1 0. So how does one install the subsystem? It appears it follows the same credo as Crouton; boot from developer mode and install it from an app store. The two choices for Linux are openSUSE and Ubuntu. These are not GUI intensive programs, but merely a command line terminal. It is the correct step for

U b u n t u I n W i n d o ws

Microsoft to acknowledge Linuxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kernel in the world of computers.

for being my distro for the last 2 years.

I do not see the corporate Linux companies going out.

However I must diverge from my main articleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intention. I gleefully used Korora as my main distro for my HP laptop at work and home. Yet I recently found out that the team are taking a sabbatical. I understand the need for breaks for work-life balance, but, in my work, I need a consistently reliable OS. I would like to give Korora a large thanks

So I returned back to using Fedora LXDE and XFCE on my laptops. I choose the upstream product for one simple reason: solidarity. I extensively know the command line under RPM based distro. My Perl, R, and PHP batch files are a fit with Fedora. I would not have to revamp my work style nor my understanding. I love rooting for the underdog, however

I do not use my Fedora laptop as my daily computer nowadays. Instead, it is the perfect compliment to my office needs. Many times I use my batch files to automate my tasks or I use my work laptop for automation. I rather use the free and open software options to complete a job task. I dislike SaaS options that are now frequent under Windows OS compliant software. Next month I will review: R and Gnuplot. I frequently have to develop basic stats for my work.

SJ Webb is a researcher coordinator. When he is not working, he enjoys time with his wife and kids. He thanks Mike Ferarri for his mentorship.

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E V E R YD A Y U B U N T U

S ys t e m S e t t i n g s P t . 1

Written by Richard Adams

s promised last month, we're going to now look at basics of Ubuntu's System Settings.

There are a number of attractive wallpapers built into Ubuntu, and I am always personally inclined to use any systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s default ones, a habit that dates from the days when hard-drive space was at a real premium, and disk space used on wallpapers could be better used for other things. There are a lot of attractive wallpapers online available to be downloaded, so you should certainly feel free to go find ones you consider appealing. You can click the down-arrow at the top to change from Wallpapers to Pictures or Colors and Gradients. To add other graphics to use as wallpapers, click the + button below and browse to the location where you have stored the desired picture.

Every operating system I've ever used, including Linux, has default system settings that just make me scratch my head in puzzled bewilderment, but it's fair to observe that it probably all comes down to personal preference. To get to the System Settings in Unity, click the 'Gear' icon on the upper right:

This will bring up a control menu that includes 'System Settings'. Click it and you'll get the screen shown right.

Below the wallpaper display, you can pick a theme. Adding themes is surprisingly difficult in Unity, but can be done either by downloading and using the Unity Tweak tool, or by finding themes with self-installing routines, sometimes requiring the setup of

We'll go through the commonly used ones in order. First: Appearance. The Appearance dialogue looks like the screen shown top right.

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EVERYDAY UBUNTU

specific repositories (check the previous Everyday Ubuntu column in issue #1 30 for more info on repositories). I think most users will find that the results are not really worth the effort, so we’ll leave it aside for brevity’s sake. Below the Theme selection area, there is an option to change the icon size for icons on the Launcher. It will default to 40; I like to drop mine to around 34 so I can get more icons on the Launcher, which I use a good bit. The tradeoff is that the larger icons are easier to see, but that becomes less of a problem as the icons

become more familiar over time. The name of the application appears if you hover the mouse, so that also makes it easier when using the smaller icons.

windows at once and can be quite handy.

Show menus for a window defaults to ‘in the menu bar’, which is more like Mac OS, whereas ‘in At the top of the dialogue box the window’s title bar’ is more like are two tabs; the one we have Windows behavior. I prefer the been looking at so far, the default, second option because I find it is Look. Switch to the Behavior tab more intuitive, and it’s more shown below. efficient to not always have to move the mouse pointer to the top Here you can decide if you want of the screen rather than the top the Launcher to auto-hide, you can of the active window. If you come add a Show Desktop icon to the to Linux from Mac, you may prefer Launcher, and you can change how the default. menus work. The Show Desktop amounts to minimizing all open I’m personally not really sure why you wouldn’t want your menus always visible, but you can opt to

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have them hidden until your mouse hovers in the title bar. I choose ‘Always displayed’. Click All Settings at the top to go back to the main System Settings, then try Brightness and Lock: I usually go here first when setting up the system to turn off the screensaver (select Never) and turn screen lock off, at least until initial setup is complete. Having the screen lock or dim while you’re actively trying to set the system up is very annoying, in my opinion. You can always go back here and tweak things to your liking after setup has been completed.

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EVERYDAY UBUNTU

Launcher on all displays or a specific one, Sticky Edges, and scaling. Sticky Edges controls autosizing of windows when dragged to screen edges and is probably best left at default in most cases.

Back in the System Settings, we’ll take a quick look at Online Accounts (shown below). You can add Facebook, Flickr, or Google accounts here. Your average user may not often use Security and Privacy settings, but there are still a few things to look at here: I personally turn off ‘Require my password when waking from suspend’ because I’m not using my machine in an open environment where someone (with ill intent) could gain physical access. This is another of the first things I change when doing setup, since repeatedly inputting your password when you’re sitting at your own desk at home is pointless

and inefficient. Most of the other settings here won’t affect home users. Under the Hardware subsection, you’ll find Bluetooth. Here, you can turn Bluetooth off and on, and manage Bluetooth devices. The Color management part of

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System Settings will usually only be important to professional graphics artists and the like, so we’ll skip that and look at Display (shown bottom right). Here you can manage your displays, resolution, screen rotation, size of menu and title bars, the placement of the

I invite feedback on easier/better ways to do things. Any such submissions in response to articles or content will be considered the property of Full Circle Magazine for publication purposes, without remuneration, unless the writer/commenter specifies otherwise. That said, commentary and feedback are heartily encouraged and appreciated, at acer1 1 kubuntu@gmail.com.

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M Y S TO RY

P a rt 2

Written by Paolo Pelloni

(see Illustration) where you are presented with several options. At the time I am writing this, the Getting Started link goes to a nonexisting page, I am sure it will be fixed by the time you read it, in any case I believe the right page should be this one: https://wiki.gnome.org/Rhythmbox /FAQ#Development_information

projects are shared, source code is available, and there is a community of people who are working to spread the knowledge and encourage others to contribute. With proprietary software, you normally find Application Programming Interface (API) documentation, where available, and that’s it!

At the top, there is a link to a Newcomers Guide, which explains the process of how to get involved. On that page you find this sentence: “There are no requirements to start My first idea was to see if I could patch the source code. This is development. It can be an one of the ways you can contribute advantage if you know a bit of object oriented programming and to the OSS community. See if git.”. I do know OOP (Object there’s a bug or room for Oriented Programming), but only a improvement, and propose your faint idea of how git works. solution. Before I could do that I Nevertheless, I dug into the list of had to understand if it was a recommended reading, and was feasible option since I quit fascinated with the whole Gnome programming long ago and didn’t project, and I encourage you to do have too much free time. I so. Although I eventually went searched the Rhythmbox project page and landed on a Gnome wiki down a different road, I would like packed with information. Scrolling to point out how all the tasks I down on the page, you can reach a mentioned are easy and achievable in the open source world where Development Resources section

Anyway, going back to my browsing the wiki, I realised that I had to digest some information before I could start typing some code, but along the way I came to understand that sorting information is stored in the Rhythmbox DB, and that is stored in an XML file on the computer. I believe the location of this file has changed over time, but now you should be able to find it in ~/.local/share/rhythmbox, and you should find a file there with the name rhythmdb.xml. If you use nautilus to browse the file system, you have to enable the view of hidden files (shortcut Ctrl+H) to see the .local folder.

quick recap of last month’s introduction. I wasn’t happy with how Rhythmbox handles song sorting information and decided to brush up my programming skills to write a little fix/improvement. In the process, I reinforced my praise for open source software and picked up a new language thanks to Full Circle. Let’s start with the former point, and keep in mind that most of what is valid for the Gnome music player can be easily applied to other open source software.

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I took a peek at the file itself,

you can do it too by opening the file in a text editor or in a browser. XML files are human readable by definition, and that simplified my task a lot. I could easily identify the structure of information and understand that every song’s information was packed in between two tags: <entry type="song"> and </entry>. Inside those two markers is stored all the information for each track; you can see an example in Text. I immediately realised where sorting information was stored... towards the end there are two fields: <mb-artistsortname> and <album-sortname>. Note that these are not part of the standard MP3 tag structure, so Rhythmbox can rely only on the one inside its database. Browsing the file, I discovered that some tracks had no sorting information despite that I entered them in the program itself. I also realised that if I entered them manually in the file they would stick, and that would partially solve my problem. If not, that it is a tedious job, you have to enter them for each and every track, and if you do something contents ^

MY STORY

wrong, you could possibly destroy the whole database.

artistsortname, and 1 971 in the album-sortname field (the year it was released so that all the records Therefore I took the decision of would be chronologically sorted). writing some code that would do To achieve that, I had to create the job for me. I knew several something to manage the XML languages with C and C++ my structure, look for track entries favourites. I never wrote anything that match the given one (David in Python, but I had the chance of Bowie/Hunky Dory), check if the following the lessons from Greg D. sorting information is already Walters on this same publication. It there, if not create it, and then sounded like a good compromise populate it. Now XML files are text for me: I didn’t go for the hard job files, but directly manipulating of learning the whole them seemed not a good option. Gnome/Rhythmbox development Could I avoid the task of structure, but at least I would learn interpreting XML? A quick search in something new. Plus Greg and I Google provided the answer: both enjoy cooking! “python xml library” returned at the top of the page: As most people do when https://docs.python.org/3/library/x picking up a programming ml.html. language, I went back to the first chapters of Greg’s lessons and Now I had an idea, plenty of tinkered with the “Hello World” documentation, a programming programs to understand a little language, and already a library to how Python works. It was very easy tackle the issue. Next month we’ll (see FCM#27 onwards), and soon I see the code I wrote and how it felt ready to take on my challenge. works. My objective was plain: given any album, I wanted to be able to enter quickly the sorting information. As an example, for Hunky Dory by David Bowie, I wanted all the tracks to have “Bowie, David” in the field mb-

FULL CIRCLE WEEKLY N EWS FULL CIRCLE 201 8 SURVEY It's that time of the year again where we ask what you think of FCM, Ubuntu, and Linux. Some questions are a requirement, some you can skip over if not applicable. Your answers will help shape Full Circle, so please use your constructive criticism. If you don't tell us what you think, or what we're doing wrong, then we won't know.

Survey URL: http://bit.ly/fcm201 8

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Join our new hosts Wayne and Joe as they present you with a short podcast (<1 0min) with just the news. No chit-chat. No time wasting. Just the latest FOSS/Linux/ Ubuntu news.

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M Y O PI N I O N

Written by Alan Ward

ne of the best things about GNU/Linux is that it does not always require the latest and greatest hardware in order to work â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it performs quite well at times when other operating systems would very simply require a new computer to run their latest versions, or the latest versions of user applications.

I s U p g ra d i n g An O l d L a p t o p W o rt h i t ?

would like to consider a couple of real-world cases that may give the reader some points of reference. As a first example, let us consider my Acer Extensa 5220 laptop that came out in 2008 and that I acquired new that year. This

computer sufficed quite well for my needs at the time, with one GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive - with the then-new SATA interface - and Windows Vista. That sets one back a step in time, I suppose. Although I upgraded the RAM to two GBytes at some point, it is clear that some

So there is a tendency in the community to hold on to hardware for longer periods of time, especially when the owner base may be slightly more computer literate than other sectors of the population. However, as with any technological product, it is to be expected that at some point the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and it becomes simply impractical to run any kind of modern GNU/Linux distribution on a very old computer. Using a computer based on an Intel i386 or i486 to do any real work should probably be considered highly unlikely at this point in time, but, in practice, where should one draw the line between usable and no longer usable hardware? In this piece, I

of the technical specifications cannot be belied: RAM must be of the slow DDR2 type since this is all the motherboard will support, the USB 2 ports must remain what they are, and I would be hard pressed to find a suitable replacement for the 802.1 1 g WiFi Card. The processor is a single-threaded Intel Celeron 32-bit CPU running at all of 1 700 MHz, and this is not upgradable. However, it still has a fairly nice keyboard, and the screen is fine for my eyes, so it stayed running off and on for the last decade. Even the battery retains about 1 0 minutes of charge, enough to set off the effects of a sudden power drop. This computer is running the latest and greatest Linux Mint at the time of writing, version 1 8.3 Sylvia XFCE (i386) with all applications updated to their latest versions. Aside from Dropbox which does seem to bog things down a bit with slower hard drives - I have every reason to be satisfied with the computerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s speed. The boot process, from GRUB menu to desktop, takes 1 26 seconds,

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MY OPINION

Firefox starts up in 1 0 seconds, and LibreOffice in 7. All this means that if I make some provision for booting (ie, go get my coffee while it does its thing), I can actually use it for some productive work in the fashion it was meant to be used. Even the Firefox and Chrome browsers seem to work relatively well in JavaScript hell, though I do admit to using mostly LibreOffice for text editing on this particular machine. So, is it still worth my money to upgrade further the existing hardware? At this point, just about the only part that could be swapped for something new would be the hard drive. A rather cheap SSD drive is an obvious candidate. In internal 2.5” form, with a SATA connector, these days they can cost anywhere from about 40€ (35 GPB, 50 USD) new - if one is not too demanding on quality and capacity - to about zero if there is a spare drive lying around in a drawer somewhere. Some of the earlier drives with capacities of 32 or 64 GBytes could very well be doing just that, having been replaced with larger sizes in a production computer somewhere along the line. This is the path I took, with a 32 GByte SSD drive or,

more precisely, a 32 GByte m-SATA drive, in card format, placed inside a 2.5” format adapter. I connected the new drive to the computer with an external USB-to-SATA interface, formatted it using btrfs and transferred both system and user files over using the btrfs

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send/receive command. I then reinstalled GRUB on the new drive with the grub-install command using the --boot-directory parameter, and unplugged the usb drive. I then opened up the laptop, and physically swapped the old rotational drive for the new one.

One nice thing about working with this class of computers is that one is not overly concerned about messing things up. The financial implications would be rather low, even if the worst happened. A second point is that access to the computer’s internals is actually

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MY OPINION

quite good for this particular model, as for other laptops of the same time-period. A single cover needs to be removed (held on with 8 Phillips 00 screws), and then RAM, hard drive and WiFi card can all be accessed together. Perhaps this could be a good way of introducing youngsters into the arcane arts of actually working on their devices. But I digress…

upgrading some of the hardware would certainly have an educational purpose to it, but that the benefit for practical use of the laptop would at best be marginal.

boot-up time from GRUB to the (cinnamon) desktop was 65 seconds, launching Firefox took 1 0 seconds, and LibreOffice 1 3. This result is interesting in itself. This computer could be expected to be As a second example, let us take quite a bit faster than the Extensa, my Acer Aspire One (AO-722) by virtue of its superior CPU, faster netbook. This one dates from hard drive connection (SATA-II 201 1 , has an AMD C60 processor instead of SATA-I), and faster RAM. with one core but two threads While general system boot-up still at 1 600 MHz total frequency, times are coherent with this line of Once the hard drive had been but each thread can take 800 MHz reasoning, Firefox seems to stick swapped, I timed the same actions. separately - and it is actually a 64- to its 1 0-second times, and Boot from GRUB to desktop was bit machine. The original LibreOffice is now noticeably now 1 03 seconds. So, about a complement was a 320 GByte slower than before. I am loathe to quarter of a minute had been rotational hard drive, two GBytes give a precise explanation for this shaved off, but both the of the slightly faster DDR-3 RAM, behavior, but perhaps some of the limitations of the CPU and of the and Windows 7 Home Edition. The blame can be placed on using 64hard drive’s SATA I bus (just 1 50 screen is a 1 1 .7” unit that has its bit versions of this software, which MBytes/s, compared to ATA’s 1 33 quirks, but still works well. Unlike are known for taking up slightly MBytes/s) mean that the speedup the Extensa, this netbook does not more disk space and RAM than the is certainly there, but may be seen have an optical unit. Battery life is 32-bit versions used on the as marginal as regards actual pretty low after this time, but, with Extensa. Other causes related to usability. As for applications, a bit of care, one can eeke out system libraries may also come Firefox now started up in 7 about one hour of power. It into play. seconds, while LibreOffice took a currently runs Linux Mint 1 8.3 measly 4 seconds. So, while the Sylvia with the Cinnamon desktop Upgrading the RAM installed to new values are better than the old, (64-bit). On the positive side for four GBytes gives no speed it is clear that the difference is upgraders, access is really easy, advantage in the least: 68 seconds probably not something that could with a bottom panel that comes to boot the desktop, 1 0 seconds to radically alter our current use of out by unfastening a single Phillips launch Firefox and 1 4 to launch this computer. 0 screw. LibreOffice. Within the margin of error of the previous For this class of machine, I With the original two Gbytes of measurements, it is clear that would probably conclude that RAM and rotational hard drive, putting more RAM into a computer full circle magazine #1 33 40

that is not actually using it (e.g. under heavy use) is not much use at all. As before, I ended up swapping the rotational hard drive for an SSD, this time a NGFF 32 GByte unit also installed inside an adaptor case to fit into the Aspire’s 2.5” SATA bay. As before, I mounted the new hard drive using an exterior USB cable, formatted it using btrfs, and transferred the system and data snapshots over to the new drive using the btrfs send/receive commands. I then installed GRUB on the new drive, and installed it physically in the computer. With the new SSD drive, boot time went down to 45 seconds, while Firefox and LibreOffice both launched in 8 seconds. So a noticeable improvement has been seen here, making the drive swap perhaps a worthwhile investment for this class of computer. This bump in speed is actually even more visible when the computer has a more powerful CPU. A Lenovo from a similar time frame (late 201 1 ) boots up in less than 20 seconds, helped no doubt by its then-powerful Intel Core i5 dual core (four-threaded) processor. contents ^

MY OPINION Summing up all these factors, my final recommendations would be as follows. In the first place, when working with older 32-bit hardware, a maximum of two GBytes of RAM should be plenty to run most applications. It is also probably not worth the time and hassle to change the hard drive for something faster, since the motherboard will likely not be able to use the supplementary speed. It would be best, to my mind, to simply use lighter distributions such as Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE editions, with Linux Mint MATE or Lubuntu as strong alternatives.

Naturally, owners with special usecases, such as video editing, may wish to invest in more RAM - and yes, I have successfully edited quite long videos on my 201 1 Lenovo with no difficulties. In any case, this class of computer will benefit more from a faster hard drive, so upgrading to an SSD model can be seen as a smart move. Besides the clear advantage in speed, it may also be noted that these drives with no moving parts tend to support better use and abuse when on the move, beside requiring less power

to work. So changing the drive will usually impact battery life favourably, and make the computer less susceptible to loosing data from hits and falls. A final reflection I would like to make is that most GNU/Linux developers are definitely in the power-user category. As such, they tend to favour high-end hardware. For this reason, when on the lookout for an older computer to repurpose with any of the variants of Ubuntu or most other mainstream distributions, it may be worthwhile to try and get a

On the other hand, once we are speaking of hardware that was formerly of a slightly superior class, such as a 7-to-8 year-old Core i5 or other 64-bit processor, in that case upgrading to a 64-bit version of our favourite distribution will mean that RAM requirements should probably begin at about two GBytes, and move on up from there. Most of these upper tier user-grade or entry-level businessclass computers will usually have come with about four GBytes of RAM, which is perfect for most modern GNU/Linux distributions.

more powerful piece of equipment than is really needed. Businesslevel computers are more likely to be completely supported than some entry-level consumer products. If in the market for a second-hand unit, price differences are no longer quite as noticeable as when buying new, so why not? These computers may also turn out to offer more upgrade paths than lower-end units. An example of this would be my decidedly lower-end Aspire, where one of the RAM slots has never even been solderdered into the motherboard. This would never have been omitted in a power laptop. As usual, though, some precautions need to be taken, such as bringing your bootable USB along when choosing the computer.

Alan holds a PhD in Information and

the Knowledge Society. He teaches computer science and engineering at Escola Andorrana de Batxillerat (high-school). He has previously given GNU/Linux courses at the University of Andorra and taught GNU/Linux systems administration at the Open University of Catalunya (UOC).

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H O W-TO

W ri t e F o r F u l l C i rc l e M a g a z i n e

Written by Ronnie Tucker

G UIDELINES

he single rule for an article is that it must somehow be

document.

REVIEWS

• Images should be JPG, no wider than 800 pixels, and use low compression.

G AMES/APPLICATIONS

linked to Ubuntu or one of the many derivatives of Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc). • Do not use tables or any type of bold or italic formatting.

RULES

• There is no word limit for articles, but be advised that long articles may be split across several issues. • For advice, please refer to the

Official Full Circle Style Guide :

http://url.fullcirclemagazine.org/7 5d471 • Write your article in whichever software you choose, I would recommend LibreOffice, but most importantly - PLEASE SPELL AND

GRAMMAR CHECK IT!

• In your article, please indicate where you would like a particular image to be placed by indicating the image name in a new paragraph or by embedding the image in the ODT (Open Office)

If you are writing a review, please follow these guidelines : When you are ready to submit your article please email it to: articles@fullcirclemagazine.org

TRANSLATIONS If you would like to translate Full Circle into your native language please send an email to ronnie@fullcirclemagazine.org and we will either put you in touch with an existing team, or give you access to the raw text to translate from. With a completed PDF, you will be able to upload your file to the main Full Circle site. full circle magazine #1 33

When reviewing games/applications please state clearly: • • • • • • •

title of the game who makes the game is it free, or a paid download? where to get it from (give download/homepage URL) is it Linux native, or did you use Wine? your marks out of five a summary with positive and negative points

H ARDWARE

When reviewing hardware please state clearly: • • • • • • •

make and model of the hardware what category would you put this hardware into? any glitches that you may have had while using the hardware? easy to get the hardware working in Linux? did you have to use Windows drivers? marks out of five a summary with positive and negative points

You don't need to be an expert to write an article - write about the games, applications and hardware that you use every day. 42

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R E VI E W

N e o n : A KD E P l a s m a 5 D i s t ro

Written by Alan Ward

s some readers may remember, I am still on a quest to get some real use out of my HP 255 G3 laptop. This rather economical computer - less than 250â&#x201A;Ź (US $300) when new - came with a rather underwhelming AMD E1 -21 00 system-on-a-chip, 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB rotational hard drive: not bad for the price, but certainly more comparable to early Chromebooks than a professional laptop. Both the original Windows 8.1 , and the Windows 1 0 upgrade, struggled to perform in any meaningful way, and - much to my chagrin - so did most Ubuntu derivative distributions back in early 201 6. The result was that I have been using this system mostly in text mode since then.

has been my impression concerning Ubuntu 1 6.04 LTS. This optimization means that even the most modern distributions can often be used on earlier hardware. I wanted to find out if this progress could actually be translated into making my laptop useful again as an actual laptop, with a full graphical environment. To do so, I kept the hardware at precisely the original specifications, though, if things go well, an SSD hard drive upgrade may be in the works. The Neon distribution (https://neon.kde.org/) is a

Two years later, however, I have noticed that many GNU/Linux distribution developers seem to have been busy making their offerings more agreeable to lowerpowered computers, specifically since Ubuntu 1 7.1 0 came out. Earlier versions also have been progressively made slightly less resource-greedy or, at least, that full circle magazine #1 33

distribution centered on the KDE Plasma-5 desktop, and based on Ubuntu 1 6.04. Though it does share quite a few similarities with Kubuntu, the aims of this distribution are rather different. Neon focuses on the desktop itself, which it showcases with the most recent versions of the software. The fact that it is based on Ubuntu seems to be less of a concern for its developers, who basically just needed a very stable operating system as a platform to build their desktop on. Ubuntu 1 6.04 seems to have fit the bill quite well.

The original version of the Plasma desktop in Kubuntu 1 6.04 was version 5.5.5, going up to 5.1 0.5 in Kubuntu 1 7.1 0. Newer versions are available in the backport PPA repository, currently with version 5.1 2.0 of the software. In Neon, the project repositories are added out-of-thebox, with newer versions of the Plasma desktop and auxiliary software: deb http://archive.neon.kde.org/u ser xenial main deb-src http://archive.neon.kde.org/u ser xenial main

In my opinion, recent versions of the Plasma desktop have had time to evolve into a nice, mature environment. This can be seen with seemingly simple operations, such as using the Alt + Tab key combination to switch between applications. A very clear list of open windows is presented to the left of the screen, and the user can see precisely which application is under focus. Application windows are also seen overlayed in contents ^

REVIEW

transparency in the main desktop area, with the topmost completely opaque and easy to see. This is of help when choosing between various windows of the same application - think of several Konsole terminals open at once, for instance.

software management techniques. Depending on which use the system will be given, it may be more handy to install just those packages that are needed by the user.

Speed is quite good. System startup and shutdown are In essence, one could very performed in a reasonable time for easily transform a Kubuntu the hardware. There is, in fact, not installation into a Neon, in much much difference between Neon the same way an Ubuntu 1 7.1 0 can and Xubuntu 1 7.1 0. For some be transformed into a Xubuntu or reason, Neon seems to be more Ubuntu Mate, for example. responsive than a comparable However, installing Neon instead version of Kubuntu or Linux Mint of another *Buntu distribution has 1 8 KDE version. To my mind, this is two specific advantages, that may a symptom of good systems or may not be pertinent for integration between the specific users. In the first place, underlying operating system, the Neon has the most recent Plasma SDDM display manager, and the software, with no need to fiddle desktop itself. Applications also around with the repositories. This come up nicely, though with a bit makes sense if one wishes to stay of a delay between clicking on the as current as possible with the KDE icon and seeing a window, desktop. The second point is that especially when the desktop is still Neon has no supplementary settling down after initialization. software, which makes for a This slight lag will probably not be smaller download file (1 .2 GB, a nuisance for calm users. Perhaps instead of up to 2 GB or more for power users would need to some recent distributions) and a consider running Neon on more quicker installation process. powerful hardware, which they Applications such as LibreOffice would probably already use in any are not included by default, case. As usual with KDE, the though they can be added with system configuration application ease using the regular Ubuntu has many options that can be used full circle magazine #1 33

to activate graphical effects as required. I found that the default set works well and is not too intrusive. However, users using just the Intel processor internal graphics circuit may wish to quit some of the animations to get better performance. The sore point will, as usual, be the web browser. Though truly necessary to make actual use of a computer in this day and age, browsers are also known to hog processor power and computer memory, moreso when that bane of the Internet known as JavaScript is in use. I will admit that it does have some advantages when trying to make a web page more pretty and perhaps make browser-to-server communication more responsive. However, it must also be said that some abuse of this technology can be seen out there – for nefarious purposes or not, much in the same way Adobe Flash had previously become a vector of both the best and the worst in programming techniques. At the time of writing, a fully upgraded version of Neon comes with Firefox “Quantum” version 58.0.1 . It works quite well even with Google Drive and suchlike,

much quicker in fact than previous versions of this browser. This concurs with my impression that developers are in fact listening to users; fair play to them for that. I actually quite enjoyed using Firefox for browsing and for some online editing, to the point that I saw no need to install a more lightweight browser such as Midori or Epiphany. Both of these are excellent choices for simple browsing; however, many of the heavier Web platforms - such as Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud tend to whinge a bit about “your browser not being compatible”. Google’s Chrome and the Opera browser are two modern alternatives that can very easily be installed in Neon. For Chrome, just contents ^

REVIEW

download the .DEB package from https://www.google.com/chrome/, then install using the following commands (please note some extra packages need to be pulled down using the aptitude or apt commands): sudo bash cd Downloads dpkg -i google-chromestable_current_amd64.deb aptitude install fontsliberation libappindicator1

In the case of Opera, the same procedure applies after downloading the .DEB package from http://www.opera.com : dpkg -i operastable_51.0.2830.26_amd64.deb

about the 50% mark even while doing relatively light tasks. In this screen capture, I was editing a single Google Document (this article) in Google Chrome. This gives you an idea of what to expect under real-world conditions: as long as you do one thing at a time, and keep unnecessary windows closed, the computer and operating system should hold up quite well. However, multitasking and editing lengthy documents would probably be better left to a more capable piece of kit.

The takeaway on Neon is that this modern distribution offers a very nice desktop environment, with all the bells and whistles of the most recent version of Plasma 5. Even so, it can be used with good results on a rather lowpowered computer. Some caveats do apply, as usual. The main point I should stress is that the user should definitely not expect much from a system with 2 GB of RAM (or less). As usual with KDE and Plasma, more processor power, or

a better graphics card, can be put to good use, when available. On a system such as this one, swaping the rotational hard drive for an SSD unit will surely be of help to speed things up a bit. However, the limiting factor is clearly the processor, and putting in a faster disk would no doubt result in less of an increase in performance than with a more capable CPU. In this sense, the Neon distribution would surely marry itself quite well to a computer that is a bit older, but equipped with an Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU and modernized with an SSD drive. So, if the reader has one lying around and is in need of a projectâ&#x20AC;Ś Why not?

aptitude install libcurl3

All of these three browsers work well, within hardware limitations. In most workflows, RAM usage can be kept underneath 2 GB, which, on a computer with a mere 4 GB, still leaves us some free space. However, the processor does tend to struggle a bit on these low-spec, cheap laptops. With my AMD E1 21 00, both cores are pegged at

Alan holds a PhD in Information and

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LE TTE RS

If you would like to submit a letter for publication, compliment or complaint, please email it to: letters@fullcirclemagazine.org . PLEASE NOTE: some letters may be edited for space.

Join us on: goo.gl/FRTMl

facebook.com/fullcircle magazine twitter.com/#!/fullcirclemag linkedin.com/company/fullcircle-magazine ubuntuforums.org/forum display.php?f=270

FULL CIRCLE 201 8 SURVEY It's that time of the year again where we ask what you think of FCM, Ubuntu, and Linux.

FULL CIRCLE N EEDS YOU ! Without reader input Full Circle would be an empty PDF file (which I don't think many people would find particularly interesting). We are always looking for articles, reviews, anything! Even small things like letters and desktop screens help fill the magazine.

Some questions are a requirement, some you can skip over if not applicable. Your answers will help shape Full Circle, so please use your constructive criticism. If you don't tell us what you think, or what we're doing wrong, then we won't know.

See the article Writing for Full Circle in this issue to read our basic guidelines.

Survey URL: http://bit.ly/fcm201 8

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Have a look at the last page of any issue to get the details of where to send your contributions.

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Q &A

If you have a Linux question, email it to: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org , and Gord will answer them in a future issue. Please include as much information as you can about your query.

Compiled by Gord Campbell

BACK NEXT MONTH

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U B U N T U G AM E S

D e u s E x: M a n ki n d D i vi d e d

Written by Oscar Rivera

robably one of the best games available for Linux at the moment is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Mankind Divided is the sixth and latest game in the Deus Ex video game series. The first game, titled Deus Ex, was released back in 2000 for Microsoft Windows & Mac OS X with an eventual release for PlayStation 2 in 2002. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was released in 201 6 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One & Linux, with a follow-up release for Mac OS X in 201 7. Mankind Divided is the first game in the series to be released for Linux. Mankind Divided was developed by Eidos Montreal & released by Square Enix with the Linux port provided by none other than Feral Interactive.

cyberpunk, action, single-player, FPS, RPG game. The year is 2029, and, revolutionary advances in technology and medicine have brought us what are known as augmented humans. When someone needs a transplant, or

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is currently selling for $29.99 through Steam, Humble Bundle, or you can get it straight from Feral Interactive. This game can morph into many different genres – which is one cool thing that makes it very interesting. I’ve seen the game described as a stealth, sci-fi, full circle magazine #1 33

another type of life saving surgery, they can get robotic transplants – which turn that person into some sort of bionic human, or, as the game calls them, augmented humans. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, you play the role of Adam Jensen, an augmented officer working for Task Force 29, a

special Interpol unit. Adam Jensen has had his share of accidents and medical emergencies, so, as a result, he’s had a number of body parts replaced and augmented to the point of being a very efficient augmented officer. What sets the Deus Ex series

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apart from many other stealth games is that, in addition to its stealth elements, you also have to deal with the augmentation aspect of the game. For example, every now and then, when Adam needs surgery, he gets an augmentation added to his list of abilities. One of the first augmented abilities that Adam gets is the ability to see through walls. You have to push a key on your keyboard (or the Left Shoulder Button on a gamepad controller) to activate (or deactivate) this visual augmentation. Some of the other augmentations you get are a the Glass-Shield Cloaking system which basically lets you become invisible, the NanoShield which makes you invincible, and, later, you get a fistmounted electro-shock system which basically replaces the stun gun that you have in your inventory during the early levels. However, using any of these augmentations drains your Energy level. Each augmentation has a minimum level at which it can be used – which also means that while you’re using an augmentation, and your energy level is dropping, eventually your energy drops so low that your augmentation can no longer work. This energy system

being tied in with the augmentations makes it so that you can’t just become invisible at the beginning of a level and walk through the entire level without being noticed. Speaking of trying to complete a level without being noticed, apparently it’s possible to beat the entire game without being noticed, and without killing anyone, but I’m assuming you need lots of patience and practice to do so.

for me, I play the game in a very sloppy yet efficient manner.

The game is a true joy to play. Being that it’s first and foremost an action, RPG, stealth game, I decided to play it with a gamepad controller, but you can also use a mouse/keyboard if you so desire. I had to make a couple of adjustments to match my prior experience with stealth games, but, once I had everything set-up the way I like it, I was able to play There are many ways to play the the game in a very natural manner. game – which makes the RPG You can have a running tutorial, concept really shine in this regard. which teaches you new moves as You can go the route of the full you get new augmentations or stealth player that moves about learn new tricks. Even with the unnoticed, or you can try to play as tutorial, there is still some extra a mean ruthless killing machine. As stuff you’ll have to learn on your

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own, such as hacking terminal servers which deactivate security measures in the buildings which you’re infiltrating. With the visually stunning scenes, and the superb voiceacting, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided feels like a complex cinematic gaming experience. The sound effects are also very impressive. Being that this game has some pretty high minimum system requirements, the better hardware you have, the better the game will look and feel. Yet, I was pleased to discover that even with my slowly aging Linux box, I was able to fully enjoy this game. The trick is to let the game decide what settings are optimal (which it will do on its own anyway), or choose one of the lowest default pre-sets so as to get better performance. If your PC can handle it, then you’re in for a cool ride as you’ll be enjoying some really cool graphics. Also, before you fire up the game, make sure that there are no other programs running that might try to steal some resources from the game. A few times I made the mistake of having my web browser running in the background, which would sometimes cause the game to lag a little bit. With the advice I’ve given, contents ^

UBUNTU GAMES

and the recommended hardware, the game should play pretty smoothly. Only twice has the game frozen on me and both times were right after I tried taking a screenshot with Steam’s built-in Screenshot recorder. For the screenshots I’ve included in this article, I relied on the default Linux PrtScn via the button on my keyboard. Other than the problems I’ve described – which are related to the demanding system requirements – I have only one other complaint about this game. The very first time I played the game, it took about 20 minutes for the game to load. I was kind of concerned that it would always take that long to load, but, from the second time I played it until the present, it’s taken about 3 minutes total to load up, a huge improvement from the initial 20 minutes. However, after a gpu driver update, expect another long wait lasting about 1 0 minutes. A minor nuisance, but then again, lots of AAA titles will have a high demand on hardware, take up a lot of space in your hard drive, and take a long time to load up.

FYI - On my computer, the game took up around 45 GB hard drive space. Also, even though my CPU is just shy of the minimum requirements (AMD FX6300 vs the required AMD FX8350), the game ran just fine as long as I didn’t have any other resource-hungry app running in the background. Overall, I strongly recommend this game. It’s got a great storyline, awesome graphics, great sound-effects, amazing voice acting, and it plays like a charm. It’s a great game if your system can handle it. One star deduction for the long load-up time & the demanding minimum requirements.

M INIMUM REQUIREMENTS OS: Ubuntu 1 6.04 64-bit, SteamOS 2.0 CPU: Intel Core i3-41 30, AMD FX8350 RAM: 8 GB RAM GPU: 2GB Nvidia 680 (driver version 367.57 or higher), AMD GPUs not supported

M Y GAMING BOX AMD FX-61 00 3.3GHz CPU (overclocked to 3.5GHz) Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics card with Nvidia 396.24 driver 1 6GB of Kingston Hyper X RAM Ubuntu 1 6.04 LTS (64-bit) with Unity desktop

Hard Drive: 67 GB available space

Oscar graduated from CSUN, is a

musician, game enthusiast and has been working with Bitcoin and other alt-coins. You can follow him at: https://twitter.com/resonant7hand or email him at: 7bluehand@gmail.com

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P AT R O N S M ONTHLY PATRONS 201 6 - Present:

Bill Berninghausen Jack McMahon Linda P Remke Schuurmans Norman Phillips Tom Rausner Charles Battersby Tom Bell Oscar Rivera Alex Crabtree Ray Spain Richard Underwood Charles Anderson Ricardo Coalla Chris Giltnane William von Hagen Mark Shuttleworth Juan Ortiz Joe Gulizia Kevin Raulins Doug Bruce Pekka Niemi Rob Fitzgerald Brian M Murray Roy Milner Brian Bogdan Scott Mack Dennis Mack John Helmers

JT Elizabeth K. Joseph Vincent Jobard Joao Cantinho Lopes John Andrews

201 7 - Present:

Matt Hopper Jay Pee Brian Kelly J.J. van Kampen

201 8 - Present:

John Helmers Kevin O'Brien Kevin Raulins Carl Andersen Charles Stewart Dave Nelson Brian Bogdan Dennis Shimer

SINGLE D ONATIONS 201 7:

Linda Prinsen Shashank Sharma Glenn Heaton Frank Dinger Randy E. Brinson Kevin Dwyer Douglas Brown full circle magazine #1 33

Daniel Truchon John Helmers Ronald Eike Dennis Shimer Iain Mckeand Jaideep Tibrewala Kevin Dwyer

201 8:

Yvo Geens Graig Pearen Carlo Puglisi James A Carnrite John Holman P G Schmitt Robert Cannon Thomas A Lawell Ronald Le Blanc Luis Eduardo Herman Glenn Heaton Peter Swentzel Alain Mallette Christophe Caron Linda Prinsen Ronald Eike Anthony Cooper Louis W Adams Jr Joseph Tong Robert G. Wells Robert Kaspar

The current site was created thanks to Lucas Westermann (Mr. Command & Conquer) who took on the task of completely rebuilding the site, and scripts, from scratch, in his own time. The Patreon page is to help pay the domain and hosting fees. The yearly target was quickly reached thanks to those listed on this page. The money also helps with the new mailing list that I set up. Several people have asked for a PayPal (single donation) option, so I’ve added a button to the right side of the website

A big thank you to all those who’ve used Patreon and the PayPal button. It’s a HUGE help.

https://www.patreon.com/ fullcirclemagazine

https://paypal.me/ronnietucker

https://donorbox.org/recurring -monthly-donation contents ^

Full Circle Team

H O W TO CO N TRI B U TE

Editor - Ronnie Tucker

FCM#1 34

FULL CIRCLE NEEDS YOU!

A magazine isn't a magazine without articles and Full Circle is no exception. We need your opinions, desktops, stories, how-to's, reviews, and anything else you want to tell your fellow *buntu users. Send your articles to: articles@fullcirclemagazine.org

Deadline :

Sunday 1 0th June 201 8. Release : Friday 29th June 201 8.

We are always looking for new articles to include in Full Circle. For help and advice please see the Official Full Circle Style Guide : http://url.fullcirclemagazine.org/75d471 Send your comments or Linux experiences to: letters@fullcirclemagazine.org Hardware/software reviews should be sent to: reviews@fullcirclemagazine.org Questions for Q&A should go to: questions@fullcirclemagazine.org Desktop screens should be emailed to: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org ... or you can visit our site via: fullcirclemagazine.org

For the Full Circle Weekly News:

Webmaster - Lucas Westermann admin@fullcirclemagazine.org

Editing & Proofreading

Mike Kennedy, Gord Campbell, Robert Orsino, Josh Hertel, Bert Jerred, Jim Dyer and Emily Gonyer Our thanks go to Canonical, the many translation teams around the world and Thorsten Wilms for the FCM logo.

Getting Full Circle Magazine: EPUB Format - Most editions have a link to the epub file

on that issue's download page. If you have any problems with the epub file, email: mobile@fullcirclemagazine.org

You can keep up to date with the Weekly News using the RSS feed: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/feed/podcast

Issuu - You can read Full Circle online via Issuu:

Or, if you're out and about, you can get the Weekly News via Stitcher Radio (Android/iOS/web): http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=85347&refid=stpr and via TuneIn at: http://tunein.com/radio/Full-Circle-WeeklyNews-p855064/

full circle magazine #1 33

ronnie@fullcirclemagazine.org

http://issuu.com/fullcirclemagazine. Please share and rate FCM as it helps to spread the word about FCM and Ubuntu.

Magzster - You can also read Full Circle online via

Magzster: http://www.magzter.com/publishers/Full-Circle. Please share and rate FCM as it helps to spread the word about FCM and Ubuntu Linux.

contents ^